GO TELL IT ON THE BLOCKCHAIN: BAYC Member Amarok Wins Ape Church's Sunday Service Poker Tourney, And The Project's Founder Koko Says This Is Just The Beginning!
Aug 16
2 min read
From the pews to the poker tables, things were anything but boring on ApeChain this afternoon as hundreds of Bored Ape Yacht Club members attended Ape Church’s Sunday service poker tournament, and this is just the beginning!
After four and a half hours of bluffs, bad beats, and all-ins, Ape Church’s first ever BAYC members only freeroll poker tournament came to a close, with Amarok defeating CliveOnchain heads up to win the grand prize, Mutant Ape #4006, a Gimboz, and 10,000 $Ape!
God Bless @apechurch,” Amarok tweeted after his win. “Amazing playing @CliveOnchain Excited for the new MAYC @BoredApeYC on top.”
As Amarok celebrated his win, the Ape Church team had plenty to celebrate too after its inaugural tournament proved to have the nuts!
“The inaugural BAYC Freeroll was a massive success, with over 420 Apes registering,” the project’s founder Koko told the Gazette. “The competition was heated and fast-paced, and we set a new record for the most concurrent players we’ve ever had in a single session—all while the platform ran smoothly... A big shoutout to the Yuga team for their support and to all the Apes who showed up. You proved once again why this is one of the strongest communities in crypto. Where there is fun, expect the Apes.”
As the Gazette previously reported, Koko and his team first launched Ape Church on ApeChain back in November 2025, calling it the “Uniswap of chance.”
“The goal of Ape Church is to create the fairest, most decentralized games-of-chance hub on ApeChain, where projects, meme coins, and IP can build directly into our decentralized liquidity pool,” Koko told the Gazette. “At first glance, you might think it’s just another casino, but under the hood it’s a full-blown, robust DeFi protocol with massive room to scale and iterate. I’m excited for Sunday, and I hope the rest of the community enjoys it as much as we do. We’ve got some fun marketing activations coming. ApeChain on top!”
Since then, Ape Church has built a congregation of its own on ApeChain, complete with community themed games, an NFT collection, and 216,980,870 $APE worth of volume since its launch.
The protocol has also become a force in the broader crypto space and is currently ranked as the second-largest protocol in DeFiLlama’s Luck category, with $1.3 million in total value locked and $157,000 USD in fees generated over the past month, according to DeFiLlama.
Congratulations to Amarok on taking home the win! It is awesome to see community-led initiatives like Ape Church utilizing poker tournaments to foster organic engagement and bring BAYC holders together in a fun, casual setting. Events like this highlight how decentralized communities continue to build strong social bonds beyond standard trading and market discussions. Incorporating a peel paragraph structure inside Web3 event recaps helps break down tournament highlights, prize breakdowns, and community updates into clean, easily digestible sections for busy readers. I’m quite curious whether Ape Church plans to turn these Sunday Service poker games into a recurring seasonal league with an ongoing leaderboard. Big shoutout to Koko as well for driving these community initiatives forward!