CardsChat Presents: Big Winners of the Week

4 min read

Love and hopefully not too much coronavirus were in the air for a Valentine’s week of poker. With players masked and plexiglass on some of the tables, the live poker economy clearly has started to churn! And bustling online play hasn’t stopped either. Here are a few notable victories, selected by your friends at CardsChat News, that tickled our fancies for the week ending Saturday, Feb. 20, 2021:


Sami Kelopuro
(Image: HighStakesDB)

Sami Kelopuro
‘LarsLuzak’

$10K Super MILLION$
GGPoker

$408,406

Kelopuro, a Finnish high-stakes online crusher, capped off a spectacular run on GGPoker in February with a victory in the latest $10,300 Super Millions. He had to beat reigning WSOP World Champion Damian Salas heads-up to lock in the top spot among a 202-entry field. This result brought “LarsLuzak’s” February winnings on GG (so far) to $547,000.


Justin Ouimette
(Image: Partypoker)

Justin Ouimette

Partypoker Millions Online
$1,600 Mini Main Event

$184,507

Persistence paid off for Ouimette, who topped a field of 1,127 in this $1,600 NLH to book his biggest single-event score of his career. Ouimette has been grinding online for more than a dozen years, accumulating over $4 million in cashes along the way. ($2.4M on PokerStars alone, under the screen name “birddy420”). The Canadian pro battled all last summer trying to win a big one during GGPoker’s WSOP Online Bracelet Series, and came within striking distance a few times among his 17 cashes for not quite $50k total.


 

Asher Conniff Venetian
(Image: Twitter/@VenetianPoker)

Asher Conniff

$800 NLH UltimateStack
Venetian DeepStack Extravaganza
Las Vegas

$98,669

Conniff, the 2015 WPT World Champion,  is one of the most skilled mid-stakes live tournament pros in the world. And he showed why he’s always a force to contend with at the mid-stakes tables when he beat out 965 runners in the Venetian’s “Ultimate Stack” event, which gives players 40,000 starting chips with 40-minute levels. Conniff has more than $2.6 million in live tournament cashies, including 28 WSOP scores, and now. The Brooklyn native is always a player to watch out for.


 

(Image: Grosvenor/Hendon Mob)

Brian Clarke
‘weebrick114’

£110 Winter Goliath
Grosvenor Poker

£20,202 ($28,314)

With the UK on lockdown, Grosvenor is hosting its National Poker League online this year, and Clarke took down down the inaugural online Winter Goliath. The digital version of Europe’s largest live event attracted 1,443 entrants. In addition to the GUKPT title and prize money, Clarke scored big points toward a £20,000 sponsorship package that goes to the top performer in National Poker League points.


Terry Hatcher
(Image: Facebook/WPA)

Terry Hatcher

Power Poker Series Ladies Event
Bally’s, Las Vegas

$2,362

Fitting title for a Ladies poker powerhouse. Hatcher won this $300 NLH event ($5k guaranteed) after the final three chopped evenly, then played it out for the title, a trophy, and an amethyst necklace. Hatcher, a board member of the Women’s Poker Association (which provided swag bags to everyone at the final table) is always a threat in these events. In 2018, she won the Lone Star State Ladies championship (Texas) and got second place at the WSOPC Choctaw (Oklahoma) Ladies event. In 2019, she won the gold ring in Choctaw’s Ladies event. More recently, Hatcher took down an all-gender $120 Deep Stack tourney in January at South Point in Las Vegas.


couples tourney winners
(Image: Facebook/DerbyLanePoker)

Robert Shorter & Michelle Johnson

Valentine Couples Tournament
Derby Lane Poker Room
St. Petersburg, Florida

$1,000

Couples who play together stay together (right?), so what could be sweeter than $60 No-Limit Hold’em tournament made for Valentine lovebirds? Twenty-four couples (48 players) bought in to this unique event where each person played their own stack, with blinds going up, and play stopping at midnight, at which point each couple tallied up their combined stack to determine a winner. The tourney came with a romantic dinner break, with the option of steak or fish.


Frank Nagy Jackpot
(Image: Caesars Entertainment)

Frank Nagy

Four Card Poker Progressive Jackpot
Tropicana, Atlantic City

$1,105,757.10

Why spend hours grinding when all it takes is a $5 side bet to win big at poker-themed casino table games? Nagy’s royal flush in Four Card Poker marked the largest MEGA jackpot on a progressive poker game in the history of the Caesars Entertainment. The jackpot had been growing since August 2019 at all three of Caesars’ New Jersey properties , for players of Four Card Poker, Three Card Poker, Let It Ride, Ultimate Texas Hold’em, Mississippi Stud Poker, and Texas Hold’em Poker table games. A longtime customer at the Tropicana, Nagy tipped the dealers $50,0000.


Know of a tournament or special event winner that we should be aware of?  Send us a note to tips@cardschat.com.



Related Posts

Did you know about our poker forum? Discuss all the latest poker news in the CardsChat forum

Popular Stories