Lex Veldhuis Wins $42K and Smashes His Own Twitch Records

PokerStars Online Team Pro Lex Veldhuis broke some personal records when 15,000 pairs of eyeballs tuned into his Twitch.tv channel and watched the Dutch poker pro final table a WCOOP event and take home $42,967.

The 33-year-old Netherlands native finished in 4th place out of 698 entries in the 2-day $1,050 Pot Limit Omaha 6-max tournament that featured a $698,000 prize pool - obliterating the $400K guarantee. Veldhuis' live stream of the action was found to be highly entertaining to poker fans as his personality is roundly perceived as affable and engaging.

So entertained were his Twitch viewers during the tournament that Veldhuis reported 300 new subscribers to his Twitch channel, smashing another personal record. His followers now number over 65,000 and that total will likely grow even more after the video of the final table is seen by  additional poker fans and players.

Ups and Downs of Poker

What a difference a few days makes as earlier this week Veldhuis informed his Twitter followers that he was having a rough go of it at the WCOOP. Admitting to be a bit out of whack mentally, the Vlissingen-born poker pro called his WCOOP play a "disaster."

While variance may have gotten the best of him at that time, it certainly wasn't a prolonged downswing by any stretch of the imagination. Just a few days prior to his self-described "low-light" during WCOOP, Veldhuis won the Hot $33 at PokerStars for $3,869.89.

A field of 866 entries were all eliminated before Veldhuis, leaving him sitting alone at the table with all the chips and first place prize money. The $33 entry fee created a $25,980 prize pool, with the champ scooping 15% of that total.

Live Action Results

While live streaming his online action at Twitch has been how Veldhuis spends much of his time as of late, he can also lay claim to a respectable live MTT career with $677,703 in cashes, per the Hendon Mob database. In 2010, he won the Dutch Poker Open $1,050 buy-in Main Event for $86,130, while his largest recorded cash came a year earlier at the WSOP when Veldhuis finished 7th in a $40,000 buy-in for $277,939.

A StarCraft aficionado more than a decade ago, Veldhuis was introduced to poker by fellow gamer and PokerStars Team Pro Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier. It was an introduction that added considerably to the poker world, considering Veldhuis' huge presence and following on Twitch.tv.