Connor "blanconegro" Drinan Wins $152,011 & His Third SCOOP Title in SCOOP-40-H: $5,200 PLO
After just over four hours of play, Connor "blanconegro" Drinan has won his third SCOOP title by taking down the PokerStars 2020 Spring Championship of Online Poker 40-H: $5,200 PLO [6-Max] tournament for the first-place prize of $152,011. He defeated "kjunia" heads-up who claimed $115,701 for their efforts over the past two days. The tournament offered a guaranteed prize pool of $750,000 and reached exactly that with the 150 entries which were collected by the 94 unique players.
Drinan is no stranger to success in poker tournaments, as a matter of fact, he already has 3 WCOOP titles in his possession. But he also has just over $11 million in live tournament cashes with wins in some of the EPT side events, one of them the €10,300 High Roller in Barcelona back in 2016 and two second-place finishes in the High Rollers in Malta and Monte Carlo in 2015.
Drinan had to defeat a loaded final table which included familiar players like Lauri "Lateski" Varonen, Ignat "0Human0" Liviu, and Talal "raidalot" Shakerchi besides "soldatikk" and "Sasuke234".
PokerStars SCOOP-40-H Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Connor "blanconegro" Drinan | United States | $152,011 |
| 2 | kjunia | Japan | $115,701 |
| 3 | Lauri "Lateski" Varonen | Finland | $88,064 |
| 4 | Ignat "0Human0" Liviu | Romania | $67,029 |
| 5 | soldatikk | Russia | $51,018 |
| 6 | Sasuke234 | Sweden | $38,831 |
| 7 | Talal "raidalot" Shakerchi | United Kingdom | $31,492 |
Hectic Start
Day 2 started with 19 players but within the first 30 minutes or so the field was reduced to 11 players. Ola "Odd_Oddsen" Amundsgard was the first to bust today and was also Drinan's first victim of the day. Gavin "gavz101" Cochrane was then eliminated by Liviu for "Sasuke234" to score a double elimination when they took out "anonymstruts" and "terror777727". "boerni21" then fell to Liviu with "Infestus176" to get kicked out by "kjunia". "KissMyAcePlz" got downed by Varonen to get the field down to two tables.
Day 1 chip leader Varonen also took out "the_eel_89" in twelfth place to then take some chips from Liviu to maintain his chip lead into the first break.
From Two Tables to One Winner
Varonen seemed unstoppable as he eliminated "EEE27", while "kjunia" took out "Strz". But Drinan did some work too, he busted "vovo_leo" and "WRUUUUM" in a time span of mere minutes to get the field down to the final table. Shakerchi took a seat at the table with the shortest stack and was also first to leave when he five-bet shoved with ace-ace-queen-ten and was looked up by "soldatikk" who held ace-ace-jack-eight. The board ran out trey-four-eight-nine-eight for "soldatikk" to river trips to send the Brit away from the tournament.
Six-handed play would last almost 80 minutes with "Sasuke234", "soldatikk", and "kjunia" doubling up once and Liviu twice before the curtains finally closed for "Sasuke234" thanks to Varonen. Varonen flopped trips and improved to a full house on the river to seal the deal. Varonen then doubled up Drinan just before the third break of the day.
Drinan took care of "soldatikk" when the latter called the three-bet with their tournament life at risk with ace-king-ten-trey. Drinan held ace-ace-nine-seven and held with the pocket pair of aces. And from then on he was unstoppable. He took out Liviu when he had flopped two pair against Liviu's flush draw and pair of nines. A few minutes later he also busted Varonen when all the chips went in pre-flop. Varonen managed to flop a set of queens but Drinan turned a straight to go into the heads-up battle with almost 73% of the chips in play.
During the 5-minute break that followed, he asked "kjunia" if they wanted to look at the deal numbers but "kjunia" said no as they wanted to recoup some of their losses over the past days. The chips went back and forth for a bit but with more and more chips going into Drinan's stack. In the end, "kjunia" called the three-bet of Drinan with all their chips. "kjunia"'s king-nine-nine-seven couldn't beat the queen-queen-ten-six of Drinan who flopped two pair and turned a full house to end the tournament.
The PokerNews live reporting team might be done with this tournament but there is still plenty of action going on over here. The live coverage of SCOOP-43-H: $2,100 NLHE, SCOOP-44-M: $530 NLHE [Sunday Million SE], and SCOOP-44-H: $5,200 NLHE [Sunday HR SE] is still going strong for a while so stick around.