First Ever WCOOP Win for Great Britain

First Ever WCOOP Win for Great Britain

Tuesday, 9 September 2008

Andy Murray might have fallen at the last hurdle in the tennis, but there was a British win this weekend as Shane Hellyer became the first Brit to win a WCOOP bracelet.


Hellyer who players under the name “Shane147” on PokerStars, became the first British poker player to secure a WCOOP bracelet, when he won the opening event of the 2008 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) this past weekend.

Hellyer, a 27-year-old blade technician from the Isle of Wight, picked up $202,409 (£114,000) for his victory.

The opening event of the 17 day PokerStars WCOOP festival was a $215 buy-in No Limit Hold'em tournament with 7,217 runners and a total prize pool of over $1.4million. As well as the prize money, Hellyer receives a gold WCOOP bracelet. Until yesterday, British players had quite an ugly record in WCOOP events, reaching 48 final tables without ever securing first place.

After a 19 hour poker marathon, Shane Hellyer commented: “I tried not to think about the money when we got down to the final table, and that helped me be more aggressive than some of the other players. It was pretty easy for me to nick blinds, and when I got a good hand, I got called.”

Hellyer, who has only been playing poker for two years, saw an early chiplead disappear midway through the final table, and he was briefly the short stack at the table when they were down to four players. His moment of luck came when he won a big pot after hitting an ache on the river. “I was really harrying the other players, and I don’t know if it was the right way to play, but I won in the end, didn’t I?”

You can see how Hellyer won top prize on the WCOOP.tv highlight show, now available on PokerStars.tv:

http://www.pokerstars.tv/pokerstars



Tags: Poker News, First, Ever, WCOOP, Win, for, Great, Britain