Teun Mulder Wins SCOOP High Roller For $250K

The latest Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) champion is Teun Mulder after a thrilling climax saw the Dutchman triumph against the Brazilian Pablo Brito heads-up.

It’s not the first time Mulder has proved himself more X-Factor than X Files with an out of this world performance at the poker felt.

Playing a rush of recent online wins, Mulder ventured into the PokerStars SCOOP High Roller for $5,200 and it took him just three and a half hours to make the final table his own after 257 entries created a prizepool of $1,285,000. Let’s look back at the latest dramatic finish in his burgeoning poker career.

Eight at the Table

While most online final tables start with nine players, PokerStars were doggedly determined to stick with eight as they entered the latest SCOOP of 2021. As a result, Daniel Smiljkovic, playing from Austria and his 9^th-place finish for $29,349 fell outside the bright lights and virtually narrowing of attention that a final table brings.

The first player to bust the official final table of eight was ‘Driekus888’, who finished 8^th, rather fulfilling his moniker for $37,061. Next to go was British professional Jon ‘Classy’ Clark, whose early years honed in South London have latterly given way to an online dedication that has seen him cash many times in recent years. Another $48,598 for finishing seventh won’t harm his resume.

In sixth place, it was Swedish player Simon Mattson who won $63,728 to add to his $1.4 million in live tournament winnings over his career to date.

Mulder Makes His Move

Mulder began to chip away at the chip lead into the second half of the final table, overtaking others by helping to bust Finnish player Joni Jouhkimainen when his king-queen got there against the Finn’s ace-queen suited.

Seconds later, Jouhkimainen was on the rail, but he was to have company quickly, with German 2017 Super High Roller Bowl winner Christoph Vogelsang busting in 4^th place for the first six-figure sum of the event. Russian player ‘a_new_hope13’provoked a hero-call with bottom pair from Vogelsang, only to see his opponent held top pair with top kicker.

It would be Vogelsang’s conqueror who would bust next, however. Holding ace-king, they saw Pablo Brito call with six-five and a flop of K-4-3 brought extreme danger with top pair-top kicker again this time playing a straight draw. That came in on the deuce turn and another deuce on the river convinced the Russian to call Brito’s all-in, to their ultimate doom.

Heads-Up is Quick and Brutal

Brito came into the heads-up battle with that late impetus, but he could not make it tell, letting a marginal chip lead at the start of the duel flip to his Dutch opponent. In the end, it was something of a cooler, Brito committing all of his chips with pocket eights only to be called and shown pocket nines.

Mulder ran those nines all the way to the river and stayed in front throughout, winning his second SCOOP title and a massive payday of $247,089, while Brito banked $188,249 for his runner-up finish. Only last year, Mulder had won $278,785 in the $10,300-entry 2020 PKO High Roller, and twelve months on, he’d made it a double. For Brito, he was denied a third SCOOP, but after a great battle, surely won’t begrudge his opponent joining him on two wins.

SCOOP $5,200-Entry 2021 High Roller Final Table Results: