The time has come for poker at its finest! After a 110-day break from the Texas Hold'em action the best is here. Just three warriors from a field of 6,865 players who ponied-up $10,000 each to play in the final event of the 2011 World Series of Poker remain.
This year's WSOP Championship offered more than $65,000,000 in total cash prizes.
Yeah, that's a lot of zeros! After whittling the field down to just nine players the live (well, almost - it's on a 15 minute delay) final table action arrived. Chip totals (by seat) on Sunday looked like this:
- 3rd Matt Giannetti 24,750,000
- 6th Badih Bounahra 19,700,000
- 2nd Eoghan O'Dea 33,925,000
- 4th Phil Collins 23,875,000
- 8th Anton Makievskyi 13,825,000
- 9th Samuel Holden 12,375,000
- 7th Pius Heinz 16,425,000
- 5th Ben Lamb 20,875,000
- 1st Martin Staszko 40,175,000
Play began with a 50,000 ante and blinds of 250,000 and 500,000 and the action took a while to heat up. The final table is always tough on the short stacks, and nothing changed for the shortest stack, Sam Holden, who was eliminated in Ninth Place but cashed for $782,115.
Anton Makiievskyi started the day in eight place and found few good hands to play. Not surprisingly he was and was eliminated in Eighth Place. His payoff was $1,010,015.
Seventh place finisher, Badih Bounahra, started the day in sixth place. He played a passive game before cashing for $1,314,097.
Eoghan O'Dea started the day in second place with over 33 million chips. His aggressive style didn't work much better than Bounahra's passive one and he was eliminated in Sixth Place for $1,720,831.
Phil Collins changed gears often but was bumped from the table in Fifth Place. He cashed for $2,269,599.The final player to leave the table was Matt Giannetti, who played a strong game and occasionally came over the top with bluffs. He was eliminated in Fourth Place but pocketed a whopping $3,012,700.
The remaining players, Ben Lamb, Martin Staszko, and Pius Heinz will resume play on Tuesday evening at 9 p.m. EST. Broadcasts are scheduled for ESPN3.com and WSOP.com ESPN TV. Remaining prize money looks like:
- Third Place: $4,019,635
- Second Place: $5,430,928
- First Place: $8,711,956
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