PokerStars New Year Series Wrap-Up: Ole Schemion Steals the Spotlight

Main Event: Ole Schemion’s Road to Victory

The $5,200 Main Event was the even everyone was waiting for, eventually drawing 230 entrants and generating a $1.15 million prize pool. After two days of high-stakes play, Ole “wizowizo” Schemion emerged victorious, claiming $224,424 — the largest prize of the festival.

Day 2 began with 15 players returning to the virtual felt, led by Thailand-based Artem “veeea” Vezhenkov. Schemion started the day tenth in chips, while names like 2014 WSOP Main Event champion Martin “M.nosbacoJ” Jacobson and high-stakes regular Michael “imluckbox” Addamo were also in contention.

As soon as the players returned to the felt, eliminations started to piled up. “SerVlaMin” was the first to bust, followed by Aliaksei “ale6ka” Boika and Andras “probirs” Nemeth. Vezhenkov, the early chip leader, began to stumble after losing a key hand against “Phemo,” whose ace-four of spades flopped a flush against Vezhenkov’s ace-king. Vezhenkov suffered another blow when his king-high straight fell to “whaleptt’s” Broadway straight on the river. Eventually, he jammed with ten-nine of clubs but couldn’t overcome Schemion’s ace-ten, fnishing the Main Event in fifth place.

One of the most pivotal moments of the event came during four-handed play when “Phemo” moved all-in with king-six of spades on a six-seven-deuce flop. Schemion, then holding nine-eight for an open-ended straight draw, called and hit his straight on the turn, eliminating “Phemo” in fourth place.

With “Phemo” and whaleptt busted out, it was high time for the heads-up battle between Schemion and Brazil’s Renan “Internett93o” Bruschi. Bruschi started with a slight chip disadvantage but managed to keep the contest close for nearly 30 minutes. The final hand saw Bruschi limp with pocket sixes, only to call Schemion’s shove with ace-four. An ace on the flop sealed Bruschi’s fate, earning him $171,081 for his runner-up finish while Schemion took home the title.

$5,200 New Year Series Main Event Final Table Results

Rank	Player	Country	Prize
1	Ole “wizowizo” Schemion		$224,424
2	Renan “Internett93o” Bruschi		$171,081
3	whaleptt		$130,416
4	Phemo		$99,418
5	Artem “veeea” Vezhenkov		$75,787
6	99dm84		$57,773
7	Martin “M.nosbacoJ” Jacobson		$44,041
8	assel007		$33,573
9	stek94		$27,306

Other Results and PokerStars New Year Series Highlights

The $5,200 Main Event wasn’t the only highlight of the series. Poland’s “DrawindDead” captured the $1,050 PKO edition of the Main Event, earning $140,670, including $61,096 in bounties. Belarus’ “blackprecise” won the $109 Mystery Bounty Main Event for $63,330, while the tournament’s top $100,000 mystery bounty went to Belgium’s “buldegah.”

Team PokerStars also made its mark, probably most notably with Marle “MarlzTV” Spragg, who took down the $22 NLHE 6-Max Hyper PKO for $5,384. With this win, Spragg became the second PokerStars Ambassador to win a title during this series, following Lex Veldhuis’s earlier triumph.

Since the series spanned across two much, it doesn’t come as a surpise that several players also snagged multiple titles during the series. Renan “Aziz.Mancha” Aziz alone claimed, the two most brag-worthy being the $530 PKO Warm-Up for $19,509 and the $215 Deep Stack for $18,317. Roman “RomeOpro” Romanovsky and Blaz “Scarmak3r” Zerjav weren’t far behind Aziz, each securing three titles during the New Years Series.

As far as the country leaderboard went, Brazil dominated with 67 titles, outpacing both Ukraine (25) and the United Kingdom (23) with an impressive margine. Poland (20) and Sweden (19) rounded out the top five, thus concluding the series.