Second WSOP bracelet win for Helppi

The 2020 GGPoker WSOP Online Bracelet Events have crowned their second champion of the festival and it was high stakes poker legend Juha Helppi that doubled his gold bracelet tally in Event #35 $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha Championship after defeating Jesus Cortes in heads-up. Both central Europeans seemed unfazed from fatigue despite their heads-up duel wrapping up at nearly 6 a.m. local time in Finland and 5 a.m. in Andorra respectively, and it was Helppi that claimed the lion's share of the $1,558,000 prize pool after topping a field of 328 entries.

Helppi had to wait a long time for his maiden WSOP victory after being present in televised poker for a long time and it came last year in Las Vegas when he took down Event #72 $10,000 Limit Hold'em Championship for $306,622. The top prize for his second triumph in as many years was worth $290,286 while former EPT Barcelona runner-up Cortes had to settle for $213,270.

Once the nicknames were turned into real names for all nine finalists, Helppi's countryman Jens Kyllonen was also revealed. The PLO specialist was one of two further players with a WSOP bracelet to their name along with Brazil's Yuri Dzivielevski. Kyllonen played a vital role in the early stages of the final table by sending three opponents to the rail but eventually had to settle for 5th place.

Alex Difelice was one of Kyllonen's victims and confirmed his hot streak on the virtual felt in the last few months with yet another deep run. The Canadian was part of a three-way deal in the 2020 SCOOP Main Event and also claimed a WSOP Circuit ring during the previous festival on the GGnetwork after topping a huge field of 2,614 entries in the $1,000 PLO Main Event under his moniker "rubbherducky".

The action kicked off with more than 70 players in their seats and that number grew by the minute. Especially towards the end of the late registration and re-entry period, plenty of big names appeared and vanished without anything to show for. Jesus Cortes emerged as one of the chip leaders when he hit a one outer for quads soon after and the eliminations kept coming at a rapid pace.

Towards the money bubble, the action suddenly slowed down and a rare phase of no eliminations followed. Eventually, Maxi Lehmanski and Brian Green bowed out at the same time on different tables with Green holding fewer chips to become the bubble boy.

In the blink of an eye, two tables closed and it didn't take long to reach the final three tables. Stephen Chidwick, Dario Alioto, Isaac Haxton, George Wolff and Anson Tsang all hit the rail in rather swift fashion. On the final table bubble, Thai Ha lost a big pot with straight under straight against Mike Watson and Shyngis Satubayev also came up short.

While Kyllonen did the leg work to trim down the contenders for the WSOP bracelet, he doubled Helppi who then took over control. In heads-up, Helppi flopped top set twice and Cortes would not recover from that anymore to come up one spot shy of poker history.

(Article courtesy of World Series of Poker)