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Written by Marcus | Sunday, July 19th, 2009
The latest update from Las Vegas and the exciting World Series of Poker is that the nine millionaire winners have been grouped up after the many play-offs. In exactly 114 days, on the 7th of November, they will meet up again at the Vegas poker tables, this time for the no-limit Texas Hold ‘em main event. The one to classify last out of these 9 players will win the $1.26 million and then it s all uphill from there with the prizes increasing in this richest poker tournament ever played. Still 114 days left, almost 4 months but the top prize of the $8.55 million crown will be definitely worth the wait and all the training practice the 9 contestants will face before that.
July 3rd saw the start of the Main Event Tournament located at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Every contestant started out with 30,000 starting chips with an unprecedented field of players split over four days.
Poker pro major, Phil Ivey, one of these 9 final players commented, “So I guess I’m going to actually start watching some poker on TV. So far I’ve just made the final table, so it’s a pretty big accomplishment. Winning it would be top of the line. Everybody here knows what they’re doing and they have good tournament strategy. To me it’s a poker game. I love to play so I’m just going to do my best, trust my reads and perform the best I can.” Ivey, obviously confident in his poker skills, did not comment further on the strategy he will use against the eight opponents.
Ivey is not new to WSOP wins as he classified seven times, such as at 10th place in 2003, 20th in 2005 and 23rd in 2002 as well as the two gold bracelets wins this year. He has won $3.46 million at the series so far, is a favourite for this year’s event where he will start off with 5 percent of the chips in play, 9.75 million.
The other eight players are relatively unknown to the poker world and never came close to this big dream now at their hands. The final table includes Jeff Schulman, 34, of Las Vegas a publisher of Card Player magazine, a former Bear Stearns Cos. executive who won his seat in a hometown poker league; Joseph Cada, 21, of Shelby Township, Antoine “Tonio” Saout, 25, of Saint Martin des Champs, France; James Akenhead, 26, of London; and Eric Buchman, 29, of Valley Stream, N.Y. Joseph Cada would be the youngest main event champion if he were to win.
Another finalist, Darvin Moon, a married, self-employed logger from Oakland, Md., is currently at the lead with 30 percent of the chips at the table. Moon is pretty surprised he got this far, since this is his first trip to Vegas altogether. Luck was also on his side as he won over Jordan Smith to get one of the nine seats. The crowd watching them was amazed at Moon’s result and broke into a celebration after the long eight hour game.
Dennis Phillips, who placed third last year met with the nine players last Thursday and gave them a pep talk on what to expect in the next four months. Phillips, was also an unknown player, a trucking account manager from a St. Louis suburb who came third after a total win by Peter Eastgate, main event winner for $9.15 million. Being one of the nine finalists proves to be stressful as there are many expectations they have to fulfil. Jeffrey Pollack, commissioner for the World Series of Poker, commented, “It’s our expectation that each member of the November nine recognizes that in some way they’re now an ambassador for the game.”
4 months is quite a long period to wait for the final event but this has become custom after it started out last year. In fact, last year was the first year that the WSOP delayed its final table until November, in the aim to generate more public interest through TV and the media television ratings for ESPN. The WSOP owner and organiser, private casino operator Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc. made a pre-payment of $1.26 million to all the players last Thursday and the rest was moved to an interest-bearing account until the day before the final table starts. ESPN will air most of the tournament weeks after it is completed, thus creating a build-up for the November final.
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Written by Marcus · Filed Under news · |
