On Monday at 1:00pm local time, the final nine players of Event #1 of the World Series of Poker Europe will reconvene at the Empire Casino in London. Leading the pack will be Adam Junglen, who has led the field virtually wire to wire and has one-third of the chips in play at the final table. The question remains as to whether he can finish his successful tournament off with a win.
Here are the chip stacks of the nine final table participants. In total, they hail from four different countries:
Chip Leader: Adam Junglen, 795,000
Second in Chips: John Dwyer, 511,000
Third in Chips: Yevgeniy Timoshenko, 345,000
Fourth in Chips: Daniel Nutt, 207,000
Fifth in Chips: Neil Channing, 199,000
Sixth in Chips: Ian Woodley, 153,000
Seventh in Chips: Linda Lee, 121,000
Eighth in Chips: Jesper Hougaard, 89,000
Ninth in Chips: Fuad Serhan, 61,000
Junglen is a young poker prodigy who took home sixth place at the European Poker Tour’s Barcelona event during Season 4, taking home €196,500. The 22 year-old American has one-third of the chips in play and 280,000 more than Dwyer. In 2007, Dwyer finished 19th in the $5,000 buy-in World Championship of Pot Limit Hold’em at the World Series of Poker, cashing for $15,900. He’s a 44 year-old Irish poker player and was near the bottom of the pack at the end of Day 1.
Timoshenko is 20, hails from the United States, and is originally from the Ukraine. He finished second in an EPT Barcelona event earlier this month for €94,000. He finished second in the Asian Poker Tour Macau Main Event and has strung together a series of successful live tournament appearances in the last month.
Nutt won his way into Event 1 of the WSOPE by playing the roulette wheel and racking up the £1,500 buy-in. Channing won €800,000 in this year’s Irish Poker Championship. He had seven cashes at the 2008 WSOP. The largest came by virtue of finishing 43rd in a $1,500 buy-in No Limit Hold’em tournament (Event #49) for $10,759. The short stack at the table, Serhan, will cash in his first ever WSOP event when all is said and done in London.
Others who finished in the money included:
Christoph Bommes: 10th Place, £8,610
Costas Artemis: 11th Place, £8,610
Joseph El-Shater: 12th Place, £8,610
Tim Pennington: 13th Place, £7,072
John Kabbaj: 14th Place, £7,072
Andy Bloch: 15th Place, £7,072
The winner of Event #1 of the 2008 WSOPE will pocket £144,218. The runner up will take home £89,175. The third place finisher will earn £55,350. Other payouts include £44,588 for fourth place, £36,285 for fifth, £28,598 for sixth, £22,448 for seventh, £17,835 for eighth, and £13,222 for ninth.
The second event of the WSOP Europe begins on Monday. It’s a £2,650 buy-in HORSE tournament that begins at 2:00pm, one hour after the final table of Event 1 starts. The Main Event, which is a £10,350 buy-in tournament, starts on Saturday, September 27th. Last year’s Main Event winner, Annette Obrestad, took home $2 million and bested a field of 362 entrants.