One of the most popular poker streamers Bert “girafganger7” Stevens created history in more ways than one when he took down the $5k WSOP Online Main Event on the GGPoker real money platform in front of a live audience on his Twitch channel.
The Belgian online poker pro won $2,783,433 for his efforts to beat a field of 6023 players, creating the biggest prize pool ever recorded in an online poker tournament.
Not only was this the biggest win in Stevens’ poker career in monetary terms, but the fact he was able to record the historic moment and play it out in front of his fans makes it one the poker world will never forget.
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GGPoker Breaks the Record
It’s been quite a month for poker players over at GGPoker, with the 2023 WSOP Online series offering tons of action and some mind-boggling guarantees.
The $25 million guaranteed WSOP Online Main Event was always going to be a big one, but the real question was whether it could break the record for the biggest prize pool in online poker, previously held by the same event held in 2020, during the peak of Covid-19 lockdowns.
In the end, the 6023 entries made for this year’s event were enough to beat the record, previously set at $27,559,500 by over a million dollars, with the new record now standing at $28,609,252.
Stevens’ $2.78 million win was not the biggest in history, though, as the 2020 champion Stoyan Madanzhiev banked $3.9 million for his efforts thanks to a more top-heavy payout structure.
Nevertheless, the 2023 WSOP Online Main Event will hold a place in the history books, at least for some time, as we wait for another poker event to beat the record and attract even more high-stakes poker players for an even larger prize pool.
All the Emotion on Display
We have seen quite a few big moments on popular Twitch poker channels, but girafganger7’s victory in the GGPoker WSOP Online Main Event is certainly the sickest recorded to date.
The online poker pro’s biggest cash before Wednesday morning was $655k he won for his second-place finish in a GGPoker Super MILLION$ event back in 2021, and he was known for taking down quite a few five-figure scores on his streams.
Just days before the final day of the Main Event, Bert made a final table of a WCOOP event and lost a heads-up battle to take down a score of $58k. This was his largest streamed victory, and he could hardly dream of what was to come.
Just days later, Stevens found himself playing the biggest final table of his life, with $251k locked up and millions more up for grabs.
The entire final table was live-streamed, with girafganger7 entering the decisive action as a chip leader and only briefly relinquishing the chip lead to Dutch poker pro Erik Bakker.
Yet, Stevens held on to the chip lead for the majority of the final table and had two-thirds of all chips in play by the time action was down to five players.
It seemed destiny wanted Bert to take this one down, and there was no stopping him. When heads-up play started, he held a 4 to 1 chip lead over Chinese player Yagen Li, who was not able to turn things around at any point in the match.
With thousands of poker fans watching the stream in real-time, it was impossible for Bert to hide his emotions as he let it all out and celebrated his win with the community.
It was a huge moment for all the poker streamers out there, as one of their own took down the biggest event in online poker, surely giving wings to all the streamers who have been struggling and waiting for their big moment.
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WSOP Online Comes to a Close
The record-breaking WSOP Online Main Event may have been the biggest online poker tournament ever, but it was not the only one of note in the 2023 WSOP Online series.
A total of 33 WSOP bracelets were given out this time around, with poker crushers like Joao Vieira, Yuri Dzivielevski, and Terrance Chan, all adding new silverware to their cabinets.
Tens of millions in prize money were paid out, with the final event on the docket, the $10k GGMillion$ High Roller, creating the second-biggest prize pool of the series at $11.4 million, the lion’s share of which went to Chinese pro David Yan.
It was another successful year for WSOP Online at GGPoker, as the festival continues to shatter records and set trends for the entire online poker world.
The festival is now in the books for 2023, as we already impatiently wait for its next iteration and more historic moments like girafganger7’s live-streamed victory.
