Putting faces to usernames as WCOOP winners are honored in Prague

Winning an international Championship of Online Poker title is the top achievement you'll earn within the video game. It's a type of titles that may be used as one of those short hand, like stars on a general's shoulder, or in your PokerStars avatar, or to your McDonalds name badge. The popularity is immediate.

But these single portions of poker history are easy to overlook. After all, when a last table concludes the table shuts down and the winner is left to celebrate alone, possibly while wearing pyjamas, exhausted after hours in front of a pc screen.

So events in Prague last night set to switch that, with an award ceremony to mark the occasion of every of the 66 titles won during a presentation within the Cloud 9 SkyBar on the Prague Hilton.

More than 1/2 this year's 66 WCOOP winners made the trip for the ceremony, familiar usernames that can now get to grips faces.

Star of the show was undoubtedly Fedor "CrownUpGuy" Holz, the WCOOP Main Event champion, who has enjoyed a breakout year.

WCOOP Main Event winner Fedor "CrownUpGuy" Holz

As well as defeating a field of 2,142 to win $1.3 million within the September showstopper, he also cashed six times at EPT Barcelona. By the point of his WCOOP win (the report of that you could read here) nobody could say they were really surprised. Although Holz was, as he explained in an interview with the PokerStars Blog.

Others on the town to assemble their bracelets were Adam "Roothlus" Levy, who beat a 967-player field in Event #49 to earn $41,572 (read the interview with Levy here), and Sweden's "whatifgod" who was the only of 2 players to win two bracelets throughout the 2014 Championship, winning both the $320 NL Hold'em 6-Max Shootout and the $215+R NL Turbo.

"WhatifGod" collects his bracelet

Not everyone was capable of attend, notably Canadian pro Shyam "G's Zee" Srinivasan, who because the canapés were being brought out was still within the Day 1B Eureka Main Event field.

Four women were among those collecting their awards.

Christina Laesser-Chang made the adventure from Taipei to select up her bracelet after winning the $215 pot-limit Omaha 6-Max event. Russian player Kristina Llakhova won the $215 pot-limit 5-Card Omaha Hi/Lo tournament, while Croatian Medina Resic won the $215 NL Hold'em 8-Max event.

All shall have prizes

Congratulations to the entire WCOOP winners, and if you wish to look back on the entire reports from this year's Championship, and skim interviews with the winners, visit our WCOOP webpage.

Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

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