The month of September was a big one for online poker as both PokerStars’ World Championship of Online Poker and partypoker’s POWERFEST brought out the biggest names in the game to compete for the largest prize pools of the year. Here are a few of the biggest PocketFives headlines in the month of September.

WCOOP and POWERFEST Take Center Stage

There’s no doubt about it, when the biggest online poker sites in the world offer massive guarantees, poker players from all over the world stop what they are doing to log on and grind. That is exactly what happened in September as both PokerStars and partypoker presented their hefty fall super series schedules.

Marquee players like Chris ‘moorman1’ Moorman, Shaun Deeb, Steve ‘MrTimCaum’ O’ Dwyer and ‘girafgander7’ all picked up titles over the course of the series. Here’s a look back at some September’s biggest results.

READ: WCOOP –  ‘wann2play’ Wins High Main Event, $1.35M
READ: POWERFEST – Steve O’ Dwyer Wins $25K Super High Roller for $896K
READ: WCOOP – Shaun Deeb Picks Up Another Victory On Son’s Birthday
READ: POWERFEST – Chris ‘moorman1’ Moorman Victorious In Six Max PKO

Take a look back on all of PocketFives’ WCOOP and POWERFEST content.

Huge WCOOP Paydays Propel Players To New Rankings Heights

After a pair of huge online series, there is bound to be titanic shifts in the online rankings. Major amounts of PLB points are there for the taking and players who may only log on to play in the biggest events are sent soaring up the charts due to big-time wins.

PokerStars tournaments alone generated a prize pool of close to $100 million and so when players won, they often won big. So we took a closer look at which players were the biggest beneficiaries of their grind. The list includes Steve O’ Dwyer, Sergio ‘zcedrick’ Aido, Chance ‘Chances Cards’ Kornuth and Joseph ‘subiime’ Cheong.

READ: Huge WCOOP Paydays Propel Players To New Rankings Heights

Denis ‘aDrENalin710’ Strebkov Does It Again

When PokerStars expanded their WCOOP schedule to include three different levels of tournaments (High/Medium/Low), as they had traditionally done during SCOOP, it gave players a chance at racking up multiple WCOOP titles. No one took more advantage of that then Russia’s Denis ‘aDreNAalin710’ Strebkov.

Strebkov went on a WCOOP heater, racking up wins and becoming one of the biggest stories of the entire series. At one point he sat atop multiple WCOOP leaderboards and was in contention for the Low, Medium, High and Overall all at the same time. On this day, Strebkov took down his fourth title en route his record-breaking run.

READ: WCOOP – Denis ‘aDrENalin710’ Strebkov Leads The Way With Fourth Win

Phil Galfond’s Online Poker Site Gets Closer To Launch

“We’re getting to the point now where, while there are still a lot of known bugs and we’re working on them, they’re fewer and further between.” – Phil Galfond discussing Run It Once Poker in September.

There was a point when Phil Galfond’s Run It Once online poker site had a September target date for launch. While they were unable to make that mark, Galfond did come out with a major update and include some of the first video of actual gameplay of the future site.

At the same time, he expanded the beta program (which is currently still in full swing) after positive feedback from those who have been playing on the closed site.

READ: Phil Galfond Shows Off Run It Once Software In Latest Update

Jonathan ‘proudflop’ Proudfoot Rises To #1 In The UK

In September PocketFives had the opportunity to touch base with 2018 UK breakout star Jonathan ‘proudflop’ Proudfoot to take about his amazing results and rise in the rankings.

The 28-year old professional talks about coming up in the online scene, building up a bankroll, going broke and turning into a ‘bad reg.’ After finding inspiration from Parker ‘tonkaaaa’ Talbot online, Proudfoot gathered himself and rededicated his focus to his online game. This led him to an incredible victory in the 888poker XL Inferno Main Event for a career-high cash of over $209,000.

Since that time Proudfoot continues to compete at the highest level, staying in the top 10 worldwide conversation.

READ: From ‘Bad Reg’ to #1 in the UK – Johnny ‘proudflop’ Proudfoot

Michael ‘mczhang’ Chi Zhang Claims September Monthly PLB Award

Absent from the headlines above is the tremendous run that the UK’s Michael ‘mczhang’ Chi Zhang went on during September. Zhang picked up 17 PLB qualifying scores and as impressive as that is, it doesn’t even begin to tell the story of his month.

Zhang put together six five-figure scores before he set a new personal best cash of $265,995 in WCOOP-43-H ($25,000 No Limit Hold’em High Roller). He was just getting started. Four days later, he broke that record in WCOOP-58-H ($5,200 No Limit Hold’em Main Event) where he took fifth for a new career-high cash of $382.252. He then went on to nearly break that record with a fourth-place finish in WCOOP-62-H ($25,000 No Limit Hold’em High Roller) for $336,740.

Then he, for the third time in the month, set a new career high cash with his third-place finish in the partypoker POWERFEST #122-SHR ($3M Championship Event) for $468,000 on September 21.

It was an amazing month for Zhang allowing him to take time away from the online tables as he hasn’t logged an online result since September 24.