2010 WSOP Main Event Results

It’s time for the 2010 WSOP main event! The tournament was set up to have four separate “Day 1″ events. The event planners had room to seat at least 12,000 players. However, the number of entries that actually registered was 7,319.

This is number is up from last year, which had 6,494 official entries. This has continued a trend over the last couple of years from the all-time high of 8,773 player field that took place in 2006 when Jamie Gold ran away from the field during the tournament.

It seemed like Texas Holdem’s popularity is decreasing; but if you take into account that the 2003 WSOP main event had then set a record for players with 839 (when Chris Moneymaker won), you can see that the main event has not suffered that much. This encouraged every garage league poker player to play online and try to make the main event with a minimum investment.

That fact of the matter is that from Greg Raymer and Joe Hachem that the majority of the recent winners of the main event have not been professional poker players before they won.

There was eventually going to be a point at which the casual poker fan stopped paying attention to the ESPN broadcasts with Norman Chad and Lon McEachern. It’s a known fact that casual fans of any activity will lose interest when things become predictable. But, the main core of internet poker players are still tuning in and online poker is still as popular as ever.

2010 WSOP Main Event

This year the total prize pool is going to be $68,798,600. This will be split up among the top 747 places. The lowest payout will be $19,263 or a little less than double the tournament entry fee.

First place will still take home a whopping $8.94 Million, which is still more than the $7.5 Million that Joe Hachem won during the 2005 main event. Also, only the top 8 players this year will win more than a million dollars.

Notable Main Event Casualties

One of the most notable players to be kicked out of the main event day 1 was self appointed poker brat Phil Helmuth. Although I have not seen the video footage, one can only imagine the spectacle that happened when he was eliminated. “If it wasn’t for luck, I’d win every tournament” or something along those lines.

Notable players to place in the money:

1987 and 1988 Champion Johnny Chan finished in a respectable 156th place and took home $57K.

1998 Champion Scotty Nguyen finished in 209th place, winning a little less than $49K.

Two-time WSOP Bracelet winner Hoyt Corkins finished in 318th place.

2003 WSOP main event runner-up and 3-time bracelet winner Sammy Farha finished in 452nd place.

5-time WSOP Bracelet winner Allen Cunningham finished in 581st place.

What does this all mean? It is still very difficult for professional poker players to make it far in the WSOP main event with the sea of amateur poker players looking to take them out. The odds that someone gets lucky when they are severally behind in the hand is still good enough that there are enough bad beats to send these pros home early.

November Nine

To drive home the point mentioned above, I have not heard of any of the top 9 players left in the tournament. You most likely have never heard of any of the “November Nine” either.

As it stands, Jonathan Duhamel leads the group with 65,900,000 in chips. John Dolan is second with 46,200,000; Joseph Cheong is third with 23,500,000; John Racener is currently 4th with 19,000,000; Matt Jarvis is 5th with 17,600,000. Filippo Candio is 6th with 16,400,000; Michael Mizrachi is 7th with 14,400,000; 8th place is Soi Nguyen with 9,600,000 and rounding out the group is Jason Senti with 7,600,000.

This goes to show you that luck (accompanied by a lot of skill) still appears to be the biggest factor for making the Main Event’s final table. All you wanna-be poker champions can enter next year’s tournament and shock the world!