It took a few weeks and thousands of players but the 2010 WSOP has finally been narrowed down to a elite group of nine. The nine will play the final round of poker in November on television. Apparently, even today with the popularity of poker, main stream media still doesn’t get why anyone would want to watch all 57 events of the WSOP on TV; but hey, at least we get this final table.
Here’s the lineup:
Filippo Candio
Joseph Cheong
John Dolan
Jonathan Duhamel
Matthew Jarvis
Michael Mizrachi
Soi Nguyen
John Racener
Jason Senti
The final event of the WSOP consisted of good old fashioned No Limit Texas Holdem which, despite the numerous variations that exist in poker, remains the most popular way to play our favorite game of skill. Perhaps the popularity of Holdem was why there were over seven thousand entrants into this year’s events and 1,125 folks who handed over their $10,000 buy in for one last chance at gold.
The week long [...]

The Poker Olympics is drawing to a close! This is my final chance to recap the poker wins by nation as I pretend we are enjoying the Olympics. Only these Olympics aren’t boring. What will the final count reveal?
Well, here are the results and rankings as research by me and based on the actual; resu;ts from this year’s tournaments and don’t include any ranking system. I’m taking in the results of this tournament only.

COUNTRY
BRACELETS
PRIZE MONEY
(for bracelet winners only)

America
40
$19,652,046

United Kingdom
5
$1,681,160

Canada
4
$1,991,917

Hungary
2
$797,944

New Zealand
1
$614,248

Norway
1
$260,497

Russia
1
$256,820

France
1
$192,132

Vietnam
1
$71,424

Like the world cup there are some unexpected results. Perhaps the Americans thought they would get them all. Maybe the French thought one of their up and coming male players would represent their nation and perhaps Vietnam is stunned to be on the board. It’s been quite a race. There’s still one more bracelet and one more pot to go.
How will the final hours go? We’ll have to wait and see.

Every time I turn around, or at least refresh my page, someone else has a poker pro sponsorship deal. Here are just the latest poker players to get that contract.
Shannon Elizabeth (the cute actress who is one awesome poker player) signed up with Carbon Poker this week. The deal includes her playing online exclusively at their casino, writing a blog for the company and represent them in tournaments.  When she isn’t appearing in cult classic like “American Pie” and “That 70s Show,” Elizabeth is playing her favorite game. She has a number of cash wins under her belt and came third at the NBC National Heads Up Event. Shannon Elizabeth is a coy player, great at bluffing and entertaining to watch.
PokerStars.net now has Vanessa Selbst (seven money finishes and one bracelet to her name) as a professional on their site. Selbst has been making her name lately winning the Main Event at Mohegan Sun earlier [...]

Coming up this July 3rd is the fourth annual charity event at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.  Organized by poker professional Annie Duke and actor Don Cheadle, the event will help support relief efforts in Africa’s most hard hit regions such as the much talked about Darfur. The charity organizers work with the WSOP I marketing and coordinating the event.
The event is not officially a part of the 2010 WSOP Main Event, it is housed in the same hotel at the same time to help ensure maximum attendance. The combination of poker professional and Hollywood faces should encourage all large bankrollers to participate in the hope of both helping those less fortunate and enjoying some big payouts. The rumor is the winner of the tournament could walk away with six figures in earnings.
Online reports indicate that Annie Duke and Don Cheadle will definitely attend along with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Ray Romano, [...]

Event 25: Omaha Hi-Low Split 8 or Better Championship. This one went to Sam Farha of Houston, Texas and gave him not only a bracelet but $488,237. This was a three day tournament with 212 entrants and a $10,000 buy in.
Event 26: Six Handed No Limit Holdem. William Haydon from the United States won this event against Jeffrey Papola of New York. Both men held aces but Haydon’s Jack beat Papola’s six of hearts and brought him a whopping $630,031 in prize money. There were 1,245 entrants with a buy in of $2,500.
Event 27: Seven Card Stud H-Low-8 or Better.  There was a $1,500 buy in and winner David Warga of Tempe who took home $208,682 as the last one standing of 208 competitors.
Event 28: Pot Limit Omaha. It was Miquel Proulx of Canada with a pair of Queens who took this victory back to his hometown of Quebec. He earned over $315,000 in prize [...]

I’m all in favor of the fans getting a say in the poker line up. The game of poker is so all about chance and skill that opinion doesn’t usually come into play. But for some of us, the professional poker players are celebrities in their own right, people that got famous for something other than looking pretty, being rich or being able to act or sing. Players are known by their skill and their fans are well aware of those abilities.
So when it was decided that the fans would vote for the players in this year’s WSOP Tournament of Champions to take place on June 27, 28 and July 4th. It’s the only time the fans have a say and the fans have certainly spoken.
Thousands upon thousands of votes were cast and the results as publish on the WSOP home page are as follows:

1
PHIL IVEY

2
DANIEL NEGREANU

3
DOYLE BRUNSON

4
PHIL HELLMUTH

5
CHRIS FERGUSON

6
ALLEN CUNNINGHAM

7
JOHNNY CHAN

8
SCOTTY NGUYEN

9
BARRY GREENSTEIN

10
JOHN JUANDA

11
ERIK [...]

Whether you are a Brit, an American, a Canadian, South American or European, your home country has brought home a bracelet and an event win at the 2010 WSOP tournament in Las Vegas. We’re just over half way through the poker playing event of the year so it seems prudent to have a look at the stats. Basically, let’s see which country leads in wins and who the top players of the tournament are so far.

EVENT NUMBER
WINNER
NATIVE COUNTRY

1
Hoai Pham
United States

2
Michael Mizrachi
United States

3
Aadam Daya
Canada

4
Michael Chow
United States

5
Praz Bansi
United Kingdom

6
Joshua Tieman
United States

7
Peter Gelencser
Hungary

8
Pascal LeFrancois
Canada

9
James Dempsey
United Kingdom

10
Men Nguyen
United States

11
Simon Watt
New Zealand

12
Matthew Matros
United States

13
Steven Gee
United States

14
Yan Chen
United States

15
Frank Kassela
United States

16
Carter Phillips
United States

17
Jason Dewitt
United States

18
Eric Buchman
United States

19
David Baker
United States

20
John Barch
United States

21
Richard Ashby
United Kingdom

22
Vanessa Hellebuyck
France

23
Dutch Boyd
United States

24
Jeffrey Tebben
United States

25
Sammy Farha
United States

26
William Haydon
United States

27
David Warga
United States

28
Miguel Proulx
Canada

29
Matt Keikoan
United States

30
Mike Ellis
United Kingdom

31
Konstantin Puchkov
Russia

32
Jeffrey Papola
United States

33
Jose-Luis Velador
United States

34
Harold Angle
United States

Clearly the United States holds the most gold medals or bracelets as [...]

After three days of play the women’s championship with over a thousand entrants comes to an end. Vanessa Hellebuyck won the heads up game against early chip leader Sidsel Boesen after seven hands of play and a pair of fives. This was Hellebuyck’s first bracelet and the first WSOP bracelet among French females. The winner goes back to her native land with over $192,000 in prize money.
Here’s the top ten placers for the ladies final as reported by highstakesnews.com:
1 Vanessa Hellebuyck   $192,132
2 Sidsel Boesen   $118,897
3 Timmi Derosa   $74,389
4 Allison Whalen   $53,994
5 Kami Chisholm   $39,860
6 Holly Hodge   $29,880
7 La Sengphet   $22,728
8 Bonnie Overfield   $17,520
9 Loren Watterworth   $13,688
10 Ronit Chamani   $10,833
Besides men entering the tournament to make a point, some professional female players boycotting, those who chose to participant seemed to have a great time. For a while it looked like La Sengphet would win doing well [...]

The event began on Friday June 11 and as I write this is still taking place. The championship had a friendly $1,000 buy in seeing a massive 1,054 entrants. Here’s a little background on some of the bigger names playing this four day girls only event.
Kami Chisolm: professional poker player from San Francisco, CA, Chisolm has six cash finishes and two first place finishes at the start of the event. From all accounts and sources, Chisolm has only been playing professionally for two years. As of this blog writing, she has made it to the final table of the Ladies’ event.
Sidsel Boesen: This Danish player has two cash finishes and one first place win to her name. Like Chisolm she only seems to have joined the professional ranks in the last few years.
Bonnie Overfield: 32 year old Overfield hails from Washington State and has yet to finish first in the professional events. She does have [...]

This week saw the beginning games of the 2010 WSOP main event and as I write this on Sunday evening we are already into Event four of the most prestigious tournament around. With 57 bracelets to distribute, this is only the beginning. Here’s a recap of the action so far.
Friday was opening day and say 722 players sat down for the beginning of the $500 casino employee No limit Hold ‘Em tournament. By the close of action that first day there were only 53 that made it into the second day of play. 2008 winner Jonathan Kotula was one of my favorites and was in the high chip count with Kent Washington who was in first. Washington was far ahead of the others and looked good going back into battle. In the end it was Hoai Pham and his pocket Aces that took home the bracelet as his heads up opponent Arthur Vea lost it [...]