Event #19 of the 2008 World Championship of Online Poker was the highly anticipated $25,000 Heads-Up No Limit Holdem tournament. 64 players ponied up the entry fee for a chance at the $560,000 first prize.
Quarterfinal Matches:
The quarterfinal matches pitted Vanessa Rousso, known as Lady Maverick, against zivziv, PAW717 against stevesbets, Victor Ramdin against Gavin Griffin, and brianm15 against Bertrand Grospellier, known as ElkY. The four who would fall in the quarterfinals would collect $100,000.
ElkY’s match would finish when brianm15 moved all-in with his pocket queens on a low flop only to see ElkY reveal a pair of kings. No help came on either the turn or the river and brianm15 was eliminated.
PAW717 would exit after check-calling stevesbets on the flop, turn, and river, finally finding himself all-in with the board reading [Jh][10c][2h][Kh][10h]. PAW717 was holding a flush with the 8h but stevesbets held the Qh for the better flush.
Victor Ramdin fell to Gavin Griffin when he was all-in with [Kd][8h] on a flop of [7d][6d][4d]. Griffin held [Ks][6s] for a pair and both players would improve their hands with a [Kh] on the turn. Ramdin would not improve on the river and was knocked out by Gavin Griffin.
Vanessa Rousso would fall to zivziv when she ran her [Qd][4c] against zivziv’s [Qc][6d] and both players flopped their low pairs on a flop of [Kc][6s][4h]. The turn was an unhelpful [7s] and the river would fall [7d] to seal the victory for zivziv.
Semifinal Matches:
In the semifinal matches Gavin Griffin would face ElkY while stevesbets would match up against zivziv. The third and fourth place finishers would receive a reward of $160,000 for making it so deep into the tournament.
ElkY would take an early lead against Gavin Griffin and not surrender it. Griffin would fall when ElkY forced him all-in on a flop of [9h][5c][2h]. Griffin turned over [9s][8d] for top pair while ElkY held [Ac][Ad]. Neither the turn nor the river would bring salvation for Griffin, who fell in fourth place.
Stevesbets and zivziv battled for a long time but zivziv would be the one to fall after stevesbets crippled his stack with a double up. Zivziv moved the rest of his chips into the middle preflop while holding [Qh][5c]. Stevesbets would make the call with [Kd][3d] and the two waited for the board to fall. The flop looked good for zivziv as it fell [Qs][Jd][2h], but stevesbets would hit a runner-runner flush with the [Qd] on the turn and the [8d] on the river to knock out zivziv.
Final Match:
ElkY and stevesbets would fight a long heads-up battle in the final match, yet the final hand would occur when both players still held a large number of chips. Stevesbets had the lead with approximately 398k while ElkY held around 242k, and with the blinds only at 3200/6400 it looked like there would be a lot of play left to come.
Instead, a preflop raising war put ElkY all-in with his pocket threes at a disadvantage to stevesbets’ pocket eights. The board would run out five blanks as it came down [Kh][5c][2c][7s][6s] and ElkY was eliminated in second place.
Bertrand Grospellier, ElkY, would take home $320,000 for his runner-up performance while Steve “stevesbets†Jacobs earned the victor’s prize of $560,000 and the WCOOP bracelet.