Finnish Poker Legend Juha Helppi Wins Second Bracelet in Event #35: $5,000 PLO Championship

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Jul 22, 2020 3 min read Last updated Jun 23, 2023

The 2020 GGPoker WSOP Online Bracelet Events have crowned their second champion of the festival and it was Finnish high-stakes poker legend Juha Helppi who doubled his gold bracelet tally in Event #35 $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship. Helppi who claimed the lion's share of the $1,558,000 prize pool after topping a field of 328 entries, receiving a first-place prize of $290,286 to go along with the coveted prize.

Helppi, a staple of European high-stakes poker for decades, had to wait a long time for his maiden WSOP victory but finally got the monkey off his back last year, when he took down Event #72 $10,000 Limit Hold'em Championship for $306,622.

The Finn already boasts nearly $8,000,000 in lifetime winnings according to The Hendon Mob, as well as countless winnings in the high-stakes PLO cash games he's been frequenting on the European circuit.

2020 WSOP Online Event #35 Final Table Results

Learn more about Juha Helppi and his decades-long high-stakes career

Kyllonen, Dzivielevski Make Final Table

Once the nicknames were turned into real names for all nine finalists, Helppi's countryman Jens Kyllonen — ubiquitously known as "Jeans89" at the high-stakes PLO tables — was also revealed. Truth be told, Kyllonen's GGPoker nickname of "98snaeJ", with the accompanying Finnish flag, left little doubt to the railbirds who was behind the moniker.

Kyllonen was one of two other 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 fifth 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 illustrious moniker "rubbherducky."

Action of the Day

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 reentry period, plenty of big names appeared and vanished without anything to show.

Cortes emerged as one of the chip leaders when he hit a one-outer for quads, and the eliminations kept coming at a rapid pace.

Towards the money bubble, the action suddenly slowed down. 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 and remained near the top of the leaderboard for the remainder of the night.

In heads-up play, Helppi flopped top set twice and Cortes would not recover from that to come up one spot shy of poker history.

2020 Online WSOP Bracelet Winners on GGPoker

A former professional poker player with a background in sports marketing and journalism. Yori has been a part of PokerNews since 2016 and manages the content team.

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