1st Ever British Player Wins WCOOP Bracelet

The World Championship of Online Poker is one of the most anticipated online tournaments in the poker industry. Players sign on all over the world to try and win a WCOOP Bracelet and bragging rights till the next event. Players have won from many different places all over the world, but a player had never won from Britain, until this past weekend.
 
Shane Hellyer became the first British player to win a WCOOP bracelet this past weekend at the opening of the 2008 World Championship of Online Poker. The opening event was a $215 No Limit Hold’em tournament that saw 7,217 players vying for the $202,409 top prize. With so many players showing up to the felt, the prize pool was well over $1.4 million.

Hellyer has only been playing poker for two years so he is not well known. He had an early lead in chips until about halfway through the final table. At that time, Hellyer became short stacked, with only four players left at the table. Hellyer’s chips came back to him when he won a huge pot with the river card. Hellyer was quoted as saying: “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?

It took nineteen hours for Hellyer to get the win and after it was over he said: “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.”