Team PokerStars Pro Lex Veldhuis took his Twitch viewers, all 32,839 of them, for quite a ride during the WCOOP $5,200 Main Event. The popular livestreamer suffered a bad beat to bust in 58th place for $28,000.
First place in this $10 million guaranteed event pays $1.5 million. So, while the cash he won was more than the average online grinder makes in a year, it wasn’t life-changing money.
But the main story here isn’t his deep run that ended with a bad beat. It’s his ability to attract such a large audience.
Online Poker Community Rails Lex Veldhuis
Lex Veldhuis (online screen name “RaSZi” has long been one of the most popular online poker streamers in the world. The PokerStars pro has over 121,000 followers on Twitch.
He is the most watched Twitch streamer and it’s not even close. Just this month, Veldhuis’ streams have been watched by over 392,000 viewers as of Thursday morning. That’s more than 245,000 views better than anyone else. And that figure will surely rise as he competes in the $25,000 WCOOP high roller live on Twitch Thursday.
“RaSZi” has streamed for hours each day throughout the 2018 WCOOP series. During the recent Main Event, fans watched him run deep for two straight days chasing glory. Would one of poker’s favorite streamers ship the biggest annual online poker event?
We won’t bury the lead here, so the answer is no. But he did pull off something almost unheard of: Get nearly 33,000 viewers to watch an online poker tournament.
Most poker streams only get a few hundred or, in some cases, a few thousand views at any given time. That is, of course, unless your name is Lex Veldhuis. Thousands watched throughout the stream and it peaked at 32,839.
Close but No Cigar
With a shot at scoring the biggest poker win on livestream in sight, Lex found an opportunity to double up. But things don’t always go as planned in poker.
Veldhuis picked up A-K in the big blind as the hand folded around to the small blind who limped with a suited Q-9 for another 80,000. Lex, with 4.4 million chips, bumped it up to 610,000.
The small blind, “thehushpuppy,” then came back over the top to put the livestreamer all-in. He made a snap call and was in a good shape to double into a big stack.
Things started off great for “RaSZi” with the K-2-4 flop, giving his opponent nothing but backdoor flush and straight draws.
The 6 of spades on the turn gave him some concern as “thehushpuppy” picked up a flush draw.
“No,” Veldhuis begged as he then watched the 7 of spades land on the river. “No, not this way. Not after that flop. Come on.”
A sick way to go out but he still took his viewers on quite a ride.
