After over 350,000 votes submitted by fans of the game, the field for the 2010 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Tournament of Champions is set. Voting closed on Tuesday at Midnight ET and the tournament kicks off in 11 days from the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino with 27 players.
Phil Ivey, considered by many to be the game’s top all-around player, sat atop the leaderboard when all was said and done with 16,267 votes cast. He edged out four-time bracelet winner and PokerStars front man Daniel Negreanu by a scant 28 votes. Negreanu recorded 16,239 votes out of the 355,000 cast by players, fans, and members of the poker media, or about 4.5%.
Voters could select up to 20 names and only bracelet winners were eligible. Negreanu and Ivey have combined for 11 bracelets and over $8 million in career WSOP earnings. The two were about 2,500 votes ahead of 10-time bracelet winner Doyle Brunson, the Godfather of Poker. “Texas Dolly,” the namesake of the popular Cake Poker Network site DoylesRoom, received 13,796 votes and won back-to-back Main Events in 1976 and 1977.
UB.com pro and poker bad boy Phil Hellmuth finished in fourth in the 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions voting at 12,673. Hellmuth owns the record for number of bracelets won at 11 and became the youngest Main Event winner ever in 1989 at age 24. His record stood for 19 years until Peter Eastgate shattered it by two years. Then, Joe Cada won poker’s biggest tournament at age 21 to become the current record holder.
A pair of Full Tilt Poker pros landed in fifth and sixth place. Chris Ferguson garnered 11,585 Tournament of Champions votes, just ahead of Allen Cunningham, who received 10,486. Ferguson and Cunningham each own five WSOP bracelets, although the former has logged 20 more in the money finishes, 61 to 41. Ferguson won the 2000 Main Event, while Cunningham finished fourth in 2006 for $3.6 million and was egged on by ESPN commentator Norman Chad’s cries of, “It’s Allen Cunningham!”
Former Main Event champion Johnny Chan took seventh in the voting with 10,434, the final player to eclipse the 10,000 mark. Chan is a 10-time bracelet winner, tied with Brunson for the second most overall, and won back-to-back Main Events in 1987 and 1988 before finishing as the runner-up to Hellmuth in 1989. The married father of six formerly served as the face of his own online poker site, Chan Poker, which vanished in 2008.
The field of 20 voted in by the general poker playing public represents the “Old Guard of Poker,” lacking any internet players or players from Europe. Here are the top 20 vote getters along with the number each received:
1. Phil Ivey – 16,267
2. Daniel Negreanu – 16,239
3. Doyle Brunson – 13,796
4. Phil Hellmuth – 12,673
5. Chris Ferguson – 11,585
6. Allen Cunningham – 10,486
7. Johnny Chan – 10,434
8. Scotty Nguyen – 9,834
9. Barry Greenstein – 9,806
10. John Juanda – 8,835
11. Erik Seidel – 8,802
12. Jennifer Harman – 8,206
13. Huck Seed – 8,180
14. Dan Harrington – 7,342
15. T.J. Cloutier – 6,281
16. Sammy Farha – 6,085
17. Howard Lederer – 5,596
18. Greg Raymer – 5,404
19. Joe Hachem – 5,272
20. Antonio Esfandiari – 5,129
Five players received automatic invites by virtue of winning past editions of the Tournament of Champions: UB.com pro Annie Duke, World Poker Tour (WPT) Host Mike Sexton, and Mike Matusow. Also claiming automatic bids were Cada and Barry Shulman, the reigning champs of the WSOP and WSOP Europe Main Events, respectively. Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier took down a sit and go qualifier put on by the WSOP Academy, while U.K. player Andrew Barton won his way in through the WSOP’s for-profit online poker site.
A total of $1 million will be up for grabs, with the Tournament of Champions’ winner banking $500,000.