Online Poker

The world series of poker is down to 18 players left. The big mover in the field is pro, Allen Cunningham (pictured winning a bracelet in 2005), who has moved up to 2nd place behind Jamie Gold.

Here are the chip counts.

1 Jamie Gold 18.2M
2 Allen Cunningham 13.4M
3 Dan Nassif 6.2M
4 David Einhorn 5.94M
5 Rhett Butler 5.7M
6 John Magill 5.3M
7 Erik Friberg 5.2M
8 Doug Kim 4.9M
9 Michael Binger 4.68M
10 Sirious Jamshidi 3.65M
11 Leif Force 3.15M
12 William Thorsson 2.92M
13 Jeffrey Lisandro 2.82M
14 Luke Chung 2.145M
15 Kevin Aaronson 1.8M
16 Fred Goldberg 1.7M
17 Richard Lee 950K
18 Paul Wasicka 950K

Last year Joe Hachem was short stacked for most of the final three tables, so nobody is out of the race yet. And they all will earn a healthy pay-packet....

That prize breakdown again.

1 - $12,000,000
2 - $6,102,499
3 - $4,123,310
4 - $3,628,513
5 - $3,216,182
6 - $2,803,851
7 - $2,391,520
8 - $1,979,189
9 - $1,566,858
10-12 - $1,154,527
13-15 - $907,128
16-18 - $659,730

$659,730 isn't bad for finishing 18th in an event! Imagine what the payout could be if Harrah's didn't steal $5.2million from the players via their 6% juice! The millions in TV revenue, sponsorship dollars and increased casino business isn't enough? You need to greedily take more from the players that make your event what it is today?

Without the players you'd have nothing Harrahs - it's criminal that you take over $5 million from them in this event alone considering all of the other money you are making through hosting the WSOP.

Kris @ Poker.com