Online Poker

June 24, 2009

Events 36 to 40 of the 2009 World Series of Poker have been decided, with pros like Matthew Graham and Jeffrey Lisandro taking victories.

Event 36 was a No-Limit Hold ‘Em event with a $2,000 buy-in and a prize pool of $3,084,900. For three days, 1,695 competitors played for the top spot that eventually went to Jordan Smith. This is the first time Smith has won a WSOP event, though he has finished in the money regularly since 2005, for fairly small amounts. Now, though, his WSOP earnings have skyrocketed, with this event awarding him $586,212 in prize money.

With a $10,000 buy-in, the World Championship Seven Card Stud H/L Event 37 was never going to draw all that many competitors. 164 entrants ended up competing in this event, to determine supremacy in Seven Card Stud H/L while also vying for part of the $1,541,600 of prize money. Jeffrey Lisandro turned out to be dominant, taking the $431,656 first place prize and a third WSOP bracelet. While not the most consistent player over the years, Lisandro has certainly achieved a lot in 2009, with an earlier win in Event 6, another Seven Card Stud tourney.

Event 38 was a Limit Hold ‘Em tournament with a very reasonable $2,000 buy-in. Nevertheless, it had a field of only 446 participants, which is quite low for such an inexpensive buy-in for a reasonably popular game. A prize pool of $811,720 awarded the first place player Marc Naalden $190,770 and his first WSOP bracelet.

Perhaps it was Event 39 that took the players from the previous event, as it had a $1,500 buy-in with a more popular game – No-Limit Hold ‘Em. From 2,715 entrants, a prize pool of $3,705,975 was generated to give the winner a payout of $657,969. This ended up going to Ray Foley, taking his first WSOP bracelet despite only having cashed a handful of times in WSOP events.

Event 40 was yet another $10,000 buy-in event, this time for the World Championship of Pot Limit Omaha. Again, not many were going to enter with such a massive buy-in, but this event is meant to attract only the very best Omaha players in the world. The prize pool from just 295 players worked out to be $2,773,300 of which $679,402 went to Matthew Graham, winning his second WSOP bracelet. He won his first last year in a Limit Hold ‘Em Shootout, and another win this year suggests he is really hitting his stride as a formidable professional poker player.

There are still many more events to be decided, with events 41 through 46 currently in contention. We are also now less than two weeks away from the beginning of the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event. While Full Tilt Poker may have already had its major round of satellite tournaments for the 2009 WSOP Main Event, it is still possible to win a seat through the daily shootout tournaments for just $200 + $16. Satellites into the shootouts are also available for as little as $8. The shootouts into the 2009 WSOP Main Event will continue to run until 30 June, so there is still time to win your way to the World Series of Poker through Full Tilt Poker.