WSOP Final Nine Decided

The World Series of Poker Main Event of 2012 has now played down to the Final Nine. This year, the nine players are dubbed the “October Nine”, rather than the more traditional “November Nine” as play will resume slightly earlier than usual – however they do have a little over two months to relax, plan their strategies, and mentally prepare themselves for the televised final table.

The October Nine is a rather youthful field this year, with seven out of the nine players being under the age of 39. There are eight Americans still in contention, but no players from South Florida – which makes for an unusual final table compared to the last four years.

The chip leader is Jesse Sylvia, a professional poker player from Las Vegas. He has only one WSOP cash under his belt, in addition to a WSOP Circuit cash. This makes him relatively inexperienced compared to the usual WSOP Main Event final table crowd, but he’s staying cool so far, and has a dominant lead over second place. Sylvia holds 43,875,000 in chips, while second placed Andras Koroknai of Hungary (the only non American at the table) holds just 29,375.

In third place is Greg Merson, an old hand at the WSOP who already holds $1.2million in WSOP winnings.

There are no women in the WSOP final table – there were some women doing well in the later days of the tournament, but they’ve long since been sent to the rail.

All of the people still in contention in the World Series of Poker will be walking away with at least $754,798 in winnings, even if they’re the first players sent home. That’s welcome news for many of the players, whose career WSOP earnings are still in the four figure range, but we can bet that they’ll all come back in October eager to win.

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