For Niklas ‘Lena900’ Astedt, winning a PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) title is nothing new. He’s even won multiple events within the same series. Three times before, in fact.
But even for Astedt, winning two WCOOP titles in the space of an hour is a new experience. That’s exactly what happened on Monday night, and perhaps the most impressive aspect of the achievement is that, to those who know his name, it hasn’t come as too much of a shock.
From WSOP to WCOOP
Astedt has been a well-known online tournament crusher for some time, but his deep run in the summer’s World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event brought the Swede to the attention of the wider poker world. Back in Las Vegas he made it all the way to the final three, cashing for $4M, before quietly returning to his ‘day job’: being the most successful online tournament player of all time.
With close to $50M in earnings on the digital felt, Astedt has little need to justify his position as the ‘end boss’ of online tournament poker. But justify it he does, letting his chips do the talking as he continues to rack up significant online wins. Those chips were positively singing yesterday as he notched up the two latest trophies in his collection, winning both the $2,100 5-Card PLO and $1,050 NLHE events within 56 minutes of each other.
First up was the hold’em event, which drew 248 entries for a prize pool of $248K. After almost 10 hours of play on Sunday the narrowed field returned on Monday evening, when it took a little over three hours for Astedt to see out the win. ‘Lena900’ outmaneuvered a strong field - which included the likes of Ole ‘wizwizo’ Schemion, Ben ‘Spraggy’ Spragg (below) and Parker ‘Tonkaaaa’ Talbot, to name but a few - to take home the $47,687.31 top prize.
'Spraggy' didn't make Day 2 on this occasion.Under an hour later, the 5-Card PLO title went his way, as he topped a pile that featured yet more big names such as Patrick ‘pads1161’ Leonard, Yuri ‘theNERDguy’ Dzivielevski and Denis ‘aDrENalin710’ Strebkov (below) to pick up a further $51,256.78 in prize money for his second win of the night - albeit after a full day of play on Sunday and three further hours on Monday.
Denis 'aDrENalin710' Strebkov finished as runner-up for $39K.
Fourth double-WCOOP win of his career
Astedt is no stranger to the demands of playing a packed online schedule; when PokerOrg asked him how he was coping with the grind of the WSOP Main Event in July, he replied, “People saying ‘this is a marathon’ should try playing 20 tables for 40 days during SCOOP.”
The 2024 WCOOP, then, marks the fourth occasion on which Astedt has picked up multiple WCOOP wins. As a result he now has 9 WCOOP wins - the same amount as his Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) title tally.
Niklas ‘Lena900’ WCOOP wins so far
| Year | Event | Entries | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | $530 PLO | 679 | $58K |
| 2020 | $5,200 NLHE PKO | 173 | $201K |
| 2020 | $2,100 NLHE | 192 | $80K |
| 2022 | $109 NLO8 | 308 | $6.5K |
| 2022 | $5,200 NLHE | 69 | $94K |
| 2023 | $5,200 NLHE PKO | 81 | $113K |
| 2023 | $1,050 NLO8 | 93 | $22K |
| 2024 | $1,050 NLHE | 248 | $47K |
| 2024 | $2,100 5-Card PLO | 114 | $51K |
