Benny Glaser is running out of fingers and toes to count his PokerStars’ Championship of Online Poker titles on after booking his record 19th win to start the current World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) series. That puts Glaser well above the field with more titles from SCOOP and WCOOP than any other player on earth.
Glaser began his assault on the COOP leaderboards slowly in 2016 with his first Championship title in that year’s Spring edition, and he picked up five more titles between the World and Spring Championships over the ensuing years until 2020. That is when the British phenom really turned it on, booking 13 more titles between the two series since 2020.
The British player, who appropriately goes by the moniker “RunGodlike” on PokerStars, booked his ninth WCOOP win early in the 2023 series and continued demonstrating his mastery of the mixed games. His latest title came in the Medium Badugi event (WCOOP 16-M: $109 FL Badugi), marking his fifth final table in this series alone.
Mixed Game Mastery for Glaser
In the modern world, No-Limit Hold’em dominates the online poker landscape — both in terms of the games played and the public image. But poker is a lot more than just Hold’em, with a variety of less familiar formats, some of which were historically ubiquitous and others just gaining newfound popularity today.
For Glaser, it seems like it is these less familiar games that he excels at — in his 19 titles, he has only one title from a two-card game, and that one was for a fixed-limit variation.
Instead, Glaser has powered through to his record-breaking 19 titles with games like Razz, HORSE, 8-Game, Deuce, and O8. He has two 8-game titles and four HORSE wins so far, so it is pretty clear that he has a solid mastery of a wide range of poker formats.
Along the way to his 19 titles, he has pocketed almost $500k from his wins alone, without even accounting for all his close calls.
Prior to winning the Badugi game for #19, Glaser had knocked at the door several times already in this year’s series. 16-M was his fifth final table of the 2023 WCOOP, with two of those FT performances ending in runner-up spots.
Given that titles number 16, 17, and 18 all came earlier this year during the SCOOP series, it seems reasonable to conclude that “RunGodlike” may still have more God-like running in his tank.
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Team PokerStars Off to a Good Start
While Canada’s Parker Talbot has some distance to go to catch up with the leader Glaser, the PokerStars Team Pro, who plays as “TONKAAAA” on the Red Spade, bagged his third WCOOP title in the early running of the 2023 series as well.
Talbot took on a big one in the $10K Super Tuesday (#15-H) this week and ended his run with the biggest score from the 2023 WCOOP so far, banking $213,229. That amount represented his second-biggest online score as well. The popular Twitch streamer was live for the win, and fans can check out the endgame below.
Strebkov Leads in WCOOP Titles Alone
Although Glaser is the reigning champ across both the spring and fall Championship series, Denis “aDrENalin710” Strebkov actually leads in fall victories after adding his tenth WCOOP title on Tuesday in 13-L. That kept him just a hair ahead of Glaser, who booked his ninth WCOOP title the same night. Strebkov now has 14 titles over both editions of the semi-annual series.
The first week of WCOOP is ongoing, and the series’s action goes into October, so there is still plenty of time left for players to get a piece of the Championship action. With WCOOP events running daily at three buy-in levels, hundreds more champions will be crowned before the chips are packed up.
