Bert 'girafganger7' Stevens Wins Largest-Ever WSOP Online Main Event

On Tuesday, Oct. 3, Bert ‘girafganger7’ Stevens took down the largest online poker tournament ever held.

The Belgian online poker legend outlasted 6,023 entries in the 2023 World Series of Poker Online $5,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em main event on GGPoker, earning his first bracelet and the top prize $2,783,433.

Not only did Stevens earn the lion’s share of the record-setting $28,609,252 prize pool, but he also made history for streaming the largest poker win ever broadcast on Twitch.

The PokerCoaching coach peaked with more than 14,000 concurrent viewers watching as he battled for the bracelet, chainsmoking cigarettes while dancing and singing along with his music from his streaming setup on a farm in Belgium.

While this was the largest online tournament ever held in terms of prize pool, Stevens’ $2.7 million payout did not break the record for the biggest online top prize. That distinction remains with 2020 WSOP Online main event champion Stoyan Madanzhiev, who topped a field of 5,802 entries that year to earn $3,904,686. While this year’s final prize pool was larger by just over $1 million, a flatter payout structure resulted in a lower (but still massive) top prize for Stevens.

Stevens, one of the most decorated online players ever, now has nearly $3.5 million in recorded earnings from events that disclose full real-name results.

The final table began with Stevens as the chip leader. He sat with more than 103 big blinds to start, while Erik Bakker was the next-largest stack with just shy of 90 big blinds.

Toward the end of the first hour of play, Bakker briefly supplanted Stevens atop the chip counts, but a big clash between that went Steven’s way saw him add some distance between himself and the rest of the field.

The hand began with Bakker raising to 2.3 big blind from the button with K3. Stevens flat called with AQ out of the small blind and the two saw a flop of A53. Stevens check-called a 2.2 big blind continuation bet with his top pair and the turn brought the Q to improve Stevens to aces and queens while making a flush possible. He again check-called, this time for 5.6 big blinds. The river was the 9, prompting yet another check from Stevens. Bakker bet 14.7 big blinds and Stevens called to drag the sizable pot.

There were still nine players remaining when that hand went down. Only one elimination occurred within the next hour, with Steven’s pocket nines besting Simon Wilson’s A-Q suited. Bakker then cracked Fabian Rolli’s pocket kings with pocket queens, spiking a set on the flop and holding from there to narrow the field to seven.

Yagen Li scored the next elimination, winning a three-way all-in with pocket kings against two A-Q suited to send Lukas Hafner to the virtual rail in seventh place.

Bakker ultimately finished sixth when he ran A-K into the pocket kings of Stevens. The pair held up and Bakkar finished sixth for $618,407. After that, Stevens had nearly 75 big blinds while the next-biggest stack sat at just 19 big blinds. He soon added to his lead by knocking out Alexander Timoshenko (5th – $835,303).

Li busted Ramiro Petrone (4th – $1,128,331) and Stevens’ pocket fives finished off Ezequiel Kleinman (3rd – $1,524,214) to set up the final showdown for the title. Stevens had more than a 4.5:1 chip advantage to start. It took him just a few minutes to convert that lead into the bracelet.

In the final hand he raised to 2.1 big blinds from the button with 66 and Li three-bet to 6 big blinds with AQ. Stevens moved all-in and Li called for 23.3 big blinds total. The board ran out KK345 to lock up the pot and the title for Stevens. Check out a clip of the final hand below, via a GGPoker social media post.

The winning moment…#WSOPOnline @WSOP pic.twitter.com/JNE24PeQGx

— GGPoker (@GGPoker) October 3, 2023

Here are the payouts from the final table:

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