Arlie Shaban Locks Up Another ONCOOP Title as Series Kicks Off

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Sep 18, 2023 4 min read

PokerStars Ontario launched the second ONCOOP of 2023 this weekend.

Ontarian poker players can compete in the 137 poker tournaments of ONCOOP until October 2.

This edition of ONCOOP is part of a wider poker festival hosted by PokerStars in the various regulated markets of North America. This wider poker festival has been dubbed NACOOP by the company and is underway in the Pennsylvania and joint New Jersey-Michigan markets as PACOOP and USCOOP respectively.

All three series offer big fields, big prizes, a wide range of buy-ins, and plenty of poker action for players in those markets.

ONCOOP Opens Big

Twenty-four events crowned champions over the course of the ONCOOP's first weekend.

The ONCOOP schedule is heavy with PKO events, which was reflected by the first event of the festival—the ONCOOP 1: $100 Kickoff PKO.

This tourney attracted 362 entries for a prize pool of $33,232 and saw "Ridin2Aces" take the event down for a $6,960 payday including bounties.

Weekend Highlights

So far, ONCOOP 20: $20 Mini Sunday Special has attracted the biggest field of the series. Some 515 unique players put in 794 entries altogether. However, this only made for a prize pool of $14,451 which puts its purse in the middle of the pack.

So far, no event has come close to the purse generated by ONCOOP 19: $200 Ontario Sunday Special Championship. This event attracted 451 entries.

With a buy-in ten times greater than The Mini Sunday Special, the Sunday Special managed to hit a prize pool of $84,112. Of that prize pool, $14,143 went to "eremys," who took first place after a heads-up chop.

We can expect even bigger events going forward.

2023 PokerStars Ontario ONCOOP Results So Far

Arlie Shaban Looks To Duplicate ONCOOP Success

Anyone paying attention to last year's ONCOOP will be wondering how Arlie "PrincePablo" Shaban is doing this time around.

All eyes are on this Ontarian poker pro as he managed to win five events in the previous iteration of ONCOOP and seems focused on replicating that success again this year. To that end, Shaban is playing an intense schedule and streaming his journey live on Twitch as he goes.

Shaban is off to an excellent start this year. He only had to wait until the second event of the series to get his first win.

After coming to the final table of ONCOOP 2: $30 Mini Kickoff PKO right in in the middle of the pack, Shaban was able to turn things around, pull ahead, and eventually beat "Flystar18" heads up for a payout of $2,110 ($858 of which was in bounties).

As well as winning ONCOOP 2, Shaban has also racked up several other cashes during this first weekend. Among these cashes was a final table appearance in ONCOOP 24: $30 Sunday Supersonic where Shaban took 7th place for $309. The first place prize of of $1,857 in this event eventually went to "BrokeJokeTim".

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