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2007 WSOP Results |
 The first event at the World Series of Poker Europe was won by a guy from Germany. Today an Italian was crowned the champion of Event 2. The last time folks from these two nations dominated a European struggle, well... really bad things happened. Seeing as neither of these winners has dreams of world domination or a tasteless little mustache, we think the EU you are safe. |
 Usually when a story involves a New Zealander, a German, a Chick from Nevada, and Jesus it is the start of the sort of joke that one commonly finds written on the walls of the men’s room of a high school or the DNC headquarters. In the historic first event of the World Series of Poker Europe, this situation described the final four players vying for the first bracelet to ever be awarded outside the Las Vegas borders. |
 Winner - Erik Seidel
Prize - $538,835
Despite winning money in seven tournaments, and making a number of final tables, Chad Brown has yet to win a bracelet. There is a point where one gets tired of the tacky bridesmaid dress, and simply longs to take the walk down the aisle wearing white. This was his chance. |
 Winner - Ram Vaswani
Prize - $217,438
Wrestlers are awarded points when an opponent has applied some sort of death grip, and they manage to turn the situation around on them. Ram Vaswani probably can’t fill out a pair of collegiate wrestling tights in quite the same manner as Kurt Angle or Brock Lesner, but he did manage to pull a reverse out of his backside and score a victory. |
 Winner - Michael Graves
Prize - $742,121
At the start of heads up play Theo Tran had a stack of chips that was a little better than half the size of the one that was in front of Michael Graves. But early play favored Tran who started cutting into the lead that Graves had. |
 Winner - Chandrasekhar Billavara
Prize - $722,914
Just like in the free for all when anyone can be splattered at any point in time by a random paintball to the head, the body count of this No Limit Holdem championship rose at an aggressive clip. |
 Winner - Dao Bac
Prize - $157,975
Usually when most of us think of a miracle it involves water being turned into something that would prompt a smile from California grape farmers. Some miracles happen with playing cards. Dao Bac was on the happy side of one such miracle on his way to an Event 51 victory. |
 Winner - Freddy Deeb
Prize - $2,276,832
It has been remarked by a number of people and sources of poker news that the $50K H.O.R.S.E. event is the most respected of the bracelets that are awarded during the World Series of Poker. |
 Winner - Robert Mizrachi
Prize - $768,889
Not only did Robert win the event and the jewelry that comes with it, but nobody can say that he managed this victory over token competition. He beat the stuffing out of a field of seasoned professionals. The most notable victim at the table was Doyle Brunson. |
 The updated list of 2007 World Series of Poker winners |
 Winner - Rafi Amit
Prize - $227,005
Event 48 may have ended with one guy wearing the bracelet, but both players who participated in the heads up match came away from the tournament with personal milestones in their poker careers. |
 Winner - Blair Rodman
Prize - $707,898
Following his bracelet winning performance at Event 47, Blair Rodman was both exhausted and elated. He spent the last part of the heads up struggle against Amato Galasso playing very aggressively. |
 Winner - Tom Schneider
Prize - $147,713
Tom Schneider may be the exception to the rule about lightning and its tendency to avoid striking in the same place twice. |
 Winner - Bill Edler
Prize - $904,672
Edler was never in anything that vaguely resembled serious trouble during the latter stages of the tournament. |
 Winner - Frankie O’Dell
Prize - $240,057
If one talks about ruling over Omaha, Nebraska, their Kingdom will be overrun with elk, turkeys, and a remarkable lack of people. For those who want to be top dog playing Omaha style poker, they will probably come into conflict with Frankie O’Dell. |
 Winner - Saif Ahmad
Prize - $217,329
Despite the fact that William Jensen began the final pairing in the lead, the match looked like a race equipped Ferrari vs. that van the kids from Scooby Doo tool around in. |
 Winner - Lukasz Dumanski
Prize - $227,454
Sometimes a missed opportunity that seems tiny at a particular moment can have a massive impact when looked at through the magnifying glass of history. In microcosm of Event 42 at the WSOP, did David Bach fold his way into a second place finish instead of taking his place among the bracelet winners? |
 Winner - Ernest Bennett
Prize - $348,423
Tony Korfman and Ernest Bennett were the last two players standing at the end of Event 41, the seniors No Limit Holdem tournament. Instead of getting bogged down in a drawn out battle for the bracelet the men instead had a short conversation. |
 Winner - Fred Goldberg
Prize - $205,271
Nobody will ever be able to accuse Fred Goldberg of being lazy this year at the World Series of Poker. |
 Winner - John Guth
Prize - $363,216
The reaction of John Guth after the last card fell was the sort of emotional explosion that is more likely seen on the show "The Price Is Right" after the announcer yells "Come on down". |
 Winner - Greg Hopkins
Prize - $269,274
The final, heads-up encounter between Greg Hopkins and Jason Newburger had all the makings of a Rookie movie. |
 Winner - Robert Cheung
Prize - $673,628
Erica Schoenberg was a runaway freight train heading down the tracks on her way to a World Series of Poker bracelet. |
 Winner - Ryan Young
Prize - $615,955
The last day of Event 35 resembled the sort of carnage that would happen if a bull decided to do a little impromptu QC on the durability of fine china. |
 Winner - Alexander Borteh
Prize - $225,483
This is the event that launched a thousand jokes. No writer can pen the line "Borteh beats Wong" without chuckling like an immature little 8th grader. This is actually rather unfair. |
 Winner - Alan Smurfit
Prize - $464,867
In the Bible there is a Jewish leader named Gideon who took on a mighty force of belligerent Midianites with such a small number of soldiers that, on paper, Gideon’s men would have had problems conquering a medium sized bowling team . In poker terms, Gideon was banking on his short stack taking the day. Alan Smurfit could probably empathize with the challenge that Gideon faced as he went into the final day of Event 33. |
 Winner - Ralph Schwartz
Related - $275,683
Although nobody expects to find the noggins of peripheral relatives stored in the fridge of Ralph Schwartz, one of our newest World Series of Poker bracelet winners does (according to his friends) fit the description of somebody who is quiet and keeps to themselves. |
 Winner - Ben Ponzio
Prize - $599,109
Ben Ponzio is a husband, father, likes playing fantasy sports, has probably high fived someone during a football game, and probably drives a mini-van. Just looking at Mr. Ponzio one can envision him somewhere in a cubicle dominated office building asking his co-worker, "Hey, working hard or hardly working?" |
 Winner - Jeffrey Lisandro
Prize - $118,426
Most of us have heard the phrase "if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again". This is the sort of thing parents tell their children in the hopes of building some world class character before someone who looks smashing in a mini skirt and preaches the wonders of the Homer Simpson, sushi, and pure evil comes along and completely ruins little Johnny or Bobby. |
 Winner - Dan Schreiber
Prize - $425,594
Anybody who would like to argue the point that they work better on less sleep can just look to Dan "Rekrul" Schreiber and his win at Event 30 of the World Series of Poker, and put that silly assertion to rest. |
 Winner - Hoyt Corkins
Prize - $515,065
The last time Hoyt Corkins won a World Series of Poker bracelet Bill Clinton was running for the Presidency of the United States, Pearl Jam was the biggest band in the world, plaid was cool, and everyone who spent more than three hours a month in a gym was getting those barbed wire tattoos around their biceps. |
 Winner - Katja Thater
Prize - $132,653
Despite her generational disconnection from the late nineties pop sensations, she was the personification of "Girl Power" during Event 29 of the World Series of Poker. |
 Winner - Shankar Pillai
Prize - $527,829
Shankar Pillai spent the better part of the World Series of Poker’s 28th event not being the story. Everyone was so taken with the prospect of Phil Hellmuth winning a possible 12th bracelet that they forgot that there were other people involved in the tournament. |
 Winner - David Stucke
Prize - $603,069
For those who find themselves excited in ways they can’t quite explain when somebody in a red nose and big floppy shoes jumps out and yells "Boo", Event 27 was their cup of tea. |
 Winner - Eli Elezra
Prize - $198,984
Eli was mentioned in a manner that would suggest he was an incredibly talented player who just couldn’t put his game completely together when it came down to playing in the World Series of Poker. |
 Winner - Scott Clements
Prize - $194,206
Scott Clements is quickly becoming the King of Omaha. Clements entered the Rio All Suites Hotel and Casino wearing the bracelet he won last year playing Omaha Hi/Lo. Less than three weeks into this year’s WSOP he added another piece of jewelry to decorate his other wrist. |
 Winner - James Mackey
Prize - $730,740
If you looked at James Mackey on the streets of any random urban center you might quickly assess that this is a kid squarely in the grips of the Clearasil years of life. |
 Winner - Donald Baruch
Prize - $264,107
Don Baruch apparently looked at who was at his final table and drank the same motivational Kool-Aid that David took before taking on Goliath. |
 Winner - Ryan Hughes
Prize - $176,358
When the final table was set, there was no single player with a dominant stack. In fact, for the most part, this was a battle of players with medium to small stacks. This created a dynamic where players were about as aggressive as one of those hives of Africanized bees that has somehow gotten into a vat of PCP. |
 Winner - Francois Safieddine
Prize - $521,785
The 300 Spartans eventually were killed but not before answering those pesky questions about the afterlife for almost 100,000 members of the Persian infantry. Francois Safieddine may not have been holding a sword but he was facing roughly the same odds as the guys who stood with King Leonidas during one of history’s most storied battles. |
 Winner - Saro Getzoyan
Prize - $333,379
In a heads up confrontation Sanford couldn’t hit a serviceable hand to save his life, and the pain ended for Geoff when Saro called Sanford’s all in attack, and beat his pair of eights with a Jack high two-pair. |
 Winner - Sally Boyer
Prize - $262,077
Even though there was no vat of mud, this tournament was one of the intriguing. The head to head competition between Sally Anne Boyer and Anne Heft bore a resemblance to a 17th century broadside battle between two equally matched battleships. |
 Winner - James Richburg
Prize - $238,881
Richburg attained his second bracelet by beating Walter Browne in a $2,500 H.O.R.S.E. competition. Even though Browne was chasing Richburg for the entirety of the final hand, the outcome was in doubt until sixth street. |
 Winner - Phil Hellmuth
Prize - $637,254
Phil Hellmuth hit a milestone in the sport of poker. He has just won a record setting 11th World Series of Poker bracelet and now stands alone as the most decorated WSOP player in history. |
 Winner - Michael Keiner
Prize - $146,987
When the tournament had gone deep into the night, and the topic of heading off to bed came up, Nesbitt protested strongly. This is one of those cases when an unanimous vote is needed. His dissent to a reasonable bedtime made sure the rest of the tournament would be played by folks whose lucidity was questioned. |
 Winner - Allen Cunningham
Prize - $487,287
Considering how monumentally difficult it is to win one WSOP bracelet in the modern era (and it is getting more difficult every year) winning five really says something about a player. |
 Winner - Chris Reslock
Prize - $258,453
There isn’t a man alive who wouldn’t want to add the words "Stud Champion" to their resume. This is the sort of title that would almost guarantee an exhausting level of feminine attention from a bevy of women who are in the transition between their days as a cheerleader and the "biological clock" years of life. |
 Winner - Jason Warner
Prize - $481,698
During Event 12 at the World Series of Poker we saw a really good plan by a man go horribly wrong. |
 Winner - William Durkee
Prize - $566,916
Despite the fact that putting Will Durkee in a World Series of Poker seat is like trying to cram a square block into a round hole, it would be hard to argue with the success he is having in the sport. |
 Winner - Alexander Kravchenko
Prize - $228,446
The truth about Russia is that anybody who has spent time in London or Chicago would probably feel right at home in Moscow. This is an alien thought to most folks in the west - mainly because of how western media treats Russia. It is for this reason that a lot of people were surprised when Alex Kravchenko walked away with the World Series of Poker Event 9 championship bracelet. |
 Winner - Michael Chu
Prize - $585,774
Chu looked at the players who had the sort of stacks that they could build a summer home with and decided that he wanted absolutely no part challenging them. |
 Winner - Burt Boutin
Prize - $868,745
Boutin, like the climber who decides a trip to Starbucks is more reasonable than to the world’s tallest mountain was going to skip this event. It was a friend who talked him into playing against the sort of stiff competition that would make even Dandolas and Binion find excuses to step out for a latte and not return. |
 Winner - Gary Styczynski
Prize - $280,715
When somebody is "semi-pro" at something it means that they have interest, some skill, but have not really given up their day job. From a tournament perspective, Gary Styczynski was squarely in the "semi-pro" category until Event 6 of the 2007 World Series of Poker. |
 Winner - Tom Schneider
Prize - $214,347
Some people jump around in professions because they are just extremely talented in so many areas. These are the type of people most of us feel pangs of jealousy over and when they succeed, a little piece of us dies inside. Tom Schneider is the poster child for this sort of annoying over achiever. |
 Winner - Michael Spiegel
Prize - $252,290
Spiegel topped Gavin Smith with a flush to win Event 4 of the 2007 World Series of Poker. The victory may not have been something he was planning on, considering the fact that he and his wife had bought tickets to see Howie Mandel on the evening of this particular tournament. |
 Winner - Cairan O’Leary
Prize - $727,012
Ciarin O’Leary faced off against almost 3000 other professionals, and at the end of this massive slugfest, was the last man standing. |
 Winner - Frederick Narciso
Prize - $104,701
What can be done with $90? If you are Frederick Narciso, that is the amount of money that was spent for your first World Series of Poker Championship bracelet. |
 Winner - Steve Billirakis
Prize - $536,287
A band called Skid Row once sang a song called "Youth Gone Wild". Perhaps the players at the WSOP are not dressing like demented lumberjacks or piercing bits of their body that were never meant to have holes (or in some cases, extra holes) punched in them, but it is the youth that is running wild there. |
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