King of the WCOOP: 'ckingusc' came out on top of the largest prize pool in online historyAfter the WCOOP Main Event scandal of last year it was inevitable that this years winner would receive a considerable amount of attention from the poker community: fortunately for PokerStars it’s clear that ‘ckingusc’ has the skill to be deemed a worthy champion for 2008.
Real name Zachary (or Carter) King, the Pocket Fiver scooped over $1.2million with victory in the biggest online tournament of all time on September 22nd, and judging by his start to professional poker he is likely to put this new found bankroll to good use.
The 22 year-old from South Carolina took up No Limit Hold ‘Em in High School and since turning semi-professional in early 2007 (after turning 21) has now scooped online and live tournament prizes of well over $2million.
His first PokerStars cash came in October 2006 but it was not until early 2008 that he started to regularly take down major prize money in the biggest internet tournaments going. March saw him final table the Sunday Million (7th, $19,351) before coming runner-up in the notoriously tough $100 re-buys on the 30th ($34,275). A month later (29th April) he FT’d the Super Tuesday (5th, $21,420) then just 5 days on went deep in the Full Tilt Sunday Mulligan (5th, $12,925). Later in May he was to take home the biggest cash of his career to date: final tabling the FTOPS $2,500 event, eventually busting in 6th for $101,138. Just 4 months later, he finds himself collecting a 7 figure score at another major online series.
King has taken to live poker as well, with offline prizes in excess of $135,000 including 5 cashes in the WSOP. The biggest of these came in the 2007 Main Event, where he came in 264th for $45,422. This beat his previous best of $40,516 when he came runner-up in a New Orleans WSOP circuit event in May of that year. He continued his WSOP form into this years series, where he cashed in the $3,000 NLH event (20th, $11,264), the $1,500 NLH 6-Handed (67th, $3,206) & final tabled the $1,500 PLH (7th, $34,063).
In a post on P5’s he was very complimentary on the attitude of MTT legend Alex ‘AJKHoosier1’ Kamberis, who finished 3rd: “thanks to everyone for all the wellwishes. gg to everyone and ul for ajk alot vs me but he was a great sport about it which is alot better then most players could ever say especially for these stakes.”
The PokerStars blog describes the crucial hand of heads-up play, before which King was on 19,958,621 and ‘liberace’ was chip leading with 34,666,379:
“A huge swing in just the 7th hand of heads up! liberace raised to 500,000 from the button/small blind, and ckingusc called. The flop came 8c-3d-7d. ckingusc checked, liberace bet 1 million, ckingusc check-raised to 3 million, and liberace shoved all in. ckingusc called with his remaining 16,933,621.
liberace: Qh-7s
ckingusc: Kd-Jd
This could be it for ckingusc! But the Kc on the turn changed the situation. And a 6d on the river gave him the flush and the 40 million-plus chip pot!
ckingusc now has a better than 3-to-1 advantage over liberace!”
PV congratulates Zachary on his tremendous achievement and given his recent record we would expect to see him high in the P5′s rankings for a long time to come.
Loading ...
