By Lisa Yiasemides
The first WPTDeepStacks Online Series, hosted by partypoker, has drawn to a close and another round of big winners emerged with titles, trophies and large cash prizes won across the partypoker.eu and partypoker.fr sites during the second week. So, who has woken up today to relive their incredible results from last night?
It has been just over two weeks since the series got underway on April 5 and the Main Event began the same night, with three varying stake-levels on offer in order to ensure players with any budget could be a part of this inaugural event. Since then, there has been at least one starting flight per night and in the €250 Main Event, a staggering 19 Day 1s took place during this time!
With a prize pool of €500,000 up for grabs, 2,145 entries were logged (including re-entries) and of those, 411 made it through to the second and final round, which kicked off at 8 pm CEST last night (April 20).
Over the course of eight hours, ‘i_Dare_U’ rose to the top, netting €80,810 for the victory as well as the Championship title and trophy. With an average buy-in of $22.55 across 4,853 games, ‘i_Dare_U’ has managed to do what many poker players strive to – convert low-mid stakes grinding into a life-changing win. Their profits have leaped from $22,086 up into six figures with $110,113 banked on this site alone.
During an interview following their win, ‘i_Dare_U’ stated that they feel “happy and satisfied”, going on to explain how it felt like the “stars were aligned” throughout, with many key situations going their way.
None were more notable than a huge three-handed clash at the start of the final table in which the flop had fallen ten-eight-deuce with two diamonds. Holding pocket eights in their hand, ‘i_Dare_U’ bet small in position hoping for a check-raise and got just that, with the big blind shoving 
of diamonds and the chip leader re-jamming with an overpair of queens. The turn paired the ten for a full house and the case eight river improved ‘i_Dare_U’ to quads. Moving into the chip lead with around 100bb, they now had the springboard needed to go on to win.
When the tournament got down to the last three, another thrilling hand took place, this time between ‘i_Dare_U’ and ‘SoulsReader’. The pair had gotten it all in preflop and ‘SoulsReader’ was the player at risk. The flop came 
and ‘i_Dare_U’ had the best of it with pocket-kings and the king of hearts but ‘SoulsReader’ held ace-ten with the ace of hearts. An ace landed on the turn sending ‘SoulsReader’ soaring into the lead but, incredibly, the river came a king!
‘SoulsReader’ took €36,785 for third place and moves into 4th place on the 2020 network leaderboard rankings. But now it was all about the final two as ‘i_Dare_U’ and ‘Frangoooooooooo’ went heads up. The former held an 11:1 chip lead which was always going to be difficult to recover from and as it turned out, there would only be one more hand played.
‘i_Dare_U’ set ‘Frangoooooooooo’ all in with king-six and with less than ten big blinds left ‘Frangoooooooooo’ tank-called with queen-seven. The flop fell king-seven-king to give ‘i_Dare_U’ trip kings and it was all over by the turn. ‘Frangoooooooooo’ will be able to console themselves with the €57,175 payday for their fantastic result and the fact that their cash has boosted them into second place on the 2020 network leaderboard rankings.
Championship Main Event Top Five
1 i_Dare_U €80,810
2 Frangoooooooooo €57,175
3 SoulsReader €36,785
4 mr.millonety €24,450
5 omahaforrollzz €17,000
While all this was going on, there were two other Championship events taking place: The €50 Mini and €5 Micro Championship events. ‘LucValmard07’ was the victor in the Mini Main Event and took €27,447 for the win after beating ‘Sparkyyy7’ (€24,632) heads up.
The match rounded off almost eight hours of action between the 738 players who made it through to Day 2 from a total of 4250 entries. One of the most notable names in contention was ‘Blank0DAMMIT’, who was the most profitable player across the entire network in 2019. They gave it their best shot but failed to progress past 18th place and won €800 for the result.
Championship Mini Event Top Five
1 LucValmard07 €27,448
2 Sparkyyy7 €24,632
3 OnceAngelito €13,740
4 AAlaTTaKK €8,948
5 Neunson €6,150
In the Micro Main Event, ‘Ledavcab’ took the lion’s share of the €45,468 prizepool. They came first out of the 1,418 entrants who had made it through to Day 2 from a whopping 10,104 entries! ‘Ledavcab’ managed to convert €5 into €6,873, after denying ‘Tonton Killer’ the win who cashed €4,803 for finishing in second place.
Championship Micro Event Top Five
1 Ledavcab €6,873
2 Tonton Killer €4,804
3 Ceveli €3,076
4 Sauveur64 €1,995
5 Taquicardia €1,364
The previous night, Sunday, April 19, was when the highest buy-in competition of the series took place. The €2,000 Prestige Championship was the last of three Super Highroller tournaments on offer on partypoker.fr. There were 64 players who took part, ensuring the €100,000 guarantee was smashed with a total of €121,600 collected for the prize pool.
‘PP14BB’ eliminated the opposition to secure themselves €39,520 in prizemoney. Incredibly, they opened their account that day and the Prestige is the only tournament they have registered so far. That means that for profit rankings, they are already in 6th this year!
With a high buy-in, it was no surprise to see some big names and those included ‘SAINTETE’ who won €26,752 for finishing second and OliveAtton (€17,632) who made it as far as third place. partypoker’s very own Bruno Fitoussi ran deep too and more than quadrupled his money with an €8,512 cash for coming in 5th place.
Prestige Championship Top Five
1 PP14BB €39,520
2 SAINTETE €26,752
3 OliveAtton €17,632
4 NOT0Rl0US €10,944
5 Bruno_Fitoussi €8,512
That signals the end of the highlight for this particular festival, but for those of you who are keen for more, do not despair as there will be another WPT Online Series look forward to very soon. Starting on May 3, WPT are once again partnering with partypoker in order to deliver another huge series that is open to the wider partypoker network. A total of ten tournaments will take place with buy-ins ranging from $530 to $25,500! For more information, click here.
See you then!