The WSOP has concluded until November with the final table all ready and waiting with anticipation to find out who will be crowned this years World Series of Poker Main Event winner.

So who are the November Nine?

1. Darvin Moon

Darvin Moon is the current chip leader. He resides from Maryland and owns a small logging company. If Moon was to go on to win the WSOP, it would be another example of the American working class hero coming good. Moon was far from being classed a professional poker player before entering this years World Series of Poker, having won his seat through a satellite in a local casino he lives near and never having any reported cashes in any prevoius poker tournaments.

2. Eric Buchman

Eric Buchman has already won over $1 Million in tournament winnings. Having already made the final table of two WSOP Events before. Eric Buchman is without doubt a contender at the WSOP final table. Having already cashed in 22 previous tournaments, with his biggest to date coming when finishing second in the 2007 WSOPC Atlantic City Main event for over $208k, he is hoping the 23rd cash will be the big one. Erik Buchman will go into the World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table as a strong favourite considering his chip stack and previous results.

3. Steven Begleiter

Steven Begleiter is more used to playing much smaller tournaments more as a hobby. It was while playing these small stakes at a local event that he plays that he won his seat to the WSOP Main Event. Steven Begleiter however, hasn’t looked like a player who only plays poker as a hobby. He goes into the final table with the 3rd biggest stack.

4. Jeff Shulman

Jeff Shulman has already made it to the WSOP Main Event Final Table before. Finishing 7th in 2000, the year Chris Ferguson beat T.J Cloutier heads up. Jeff having already won over $1 Million in tournament winnings goes into the final table sitting in 4th and looking strong. It would be a mistake to write Jeff off at the minute.

5. Joseph Cada

Joseph Cada is the typical Online Poker Player, aggressive and successful. At only 21, Cada has already played in 16 WSOP Events making over $500,000 in profits. Most of his profits have came from online where he is known by the username jcada99. Joseph Cada with an already guaranteed $1.2 Million for making the final table will be hoping to increase that to $8.5 Million by winning this event, which is not impossible.

6. Kevin Schaffel

Kevin Schaffel at 51 hopes to win the WSOP and retire. Schaffel who has been playing poker for a few years now, seriously for 5, has over $160k in tournament cashes. However, he is yet to actually win an tournament. His biggest cash to date was finishing 42nd in the 1994 World Series of Poker Main Event for 60k.

7. Phil Ivey

Phil Ivey is a man that does not need an introduction, nor do you need to give you some bland information on his poker career. Ivey is a poker legend already at the age of 33. He is currently the player to beat in any tournament he plays. The  WSOP Main Event being no different.

8. Antoine Saout

Antoine Saout from France qualified for the World Series of Poker Main Event through a satellite on his beloved Everest Poker. So its only fair that soon after making the WSOP Main Event Final Table that Everest Poker sign him up as their newest member to Team Everest.

9. James Akenhead

James Akenhead will fly the flag for all the British Poker players who played in the WSOP Main Event. Unlike the rest of the final table James Akenhead hasn’t had the luck of the poker gods. James Akenhead sat down on the first day for him to run Kings into Aces. After that he took hit after hit on the first day and has slowly grinded his way to the final table being short stacked for nearly the whole tournament. This man is dangerous even from the short stack and can not be written off just yet.

Day 1a of the WSOPE Main Event saw 156 players take to the poker tables, including some of the biggest names in the poker world: Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, Vanessa Rousso, and Patrik Antonius.

There were no shortage of casualties on day 1a, which saw the like of Hoyt Corkins, Robert Mizrachi, Vanessa Rousso, Huck Seed, Phil Ivey, and Andy Bloch among others eliminated. Even with the loss of the aforementioned big names, many top players advanced on like Doyle Brunson, Todd Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Men Nguyen, Erik Seidel, Patrik Antonius, and Nick Schulman.

One down-note was the fact that we had to witness another over-the-top entrance by Phil Hellmuth (when will the absurdity end???) where he rehashed his Roman Gladiator/Emperor outfit from the WSOP –the outfit was different but the theme remained the same—and arrived in a horse drawn chariot with models in tow.

The tournament will recommence today, where officials expect the typical larger turnout for day 1b.

After day 1a attracted a respectable 156 players, the WSOPE was hoping for the typical larger turnout for day 1b. However, the second flight for the WSOPE Main Event had a good, but underwhelming 178 entrants.

In all, the tournament had a total of 334 players; each of whom parted with the $14,000+ buy-in. Of those 334 players, 186 players remain when play resumes today at 5:30 pm –the delay is in observance of the Jewish holiday.

Among the notable players who managed to survive the carnage of day 1b were, Steve Zolotow, Ram Vaswani, Daniel Negreanu, and Antonio Esfandiari: All of whom are near the top of the leader-board. The tournament is laden with big name pros (exactly what you’d expect from a $14k buy-in tournament) who have been dominating the tournament scene all year long.

After completing their second day of play, the WSOPE Main Event is down to 92 players. Day 3 action will kick off at noon, with the remaining participants playing down to 36 –which happens to be the number of players who will reach the money.

Day 2 saw a lot of high-profile casualties including: Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, Phil Hellmuth, David Williams, Mike Matusow, and Barry Greenstein. But fear not, there are still plenty of big names still kicking, and some prospering! Here are the top 10 chip counts going into day 3:

1. Ian Munns — 528,300
2. Praz Bansi — 299,000
3. Oyvind Riisem — 255,300
4. Arron Eric Filippi — 216,500
5. David Docherty — 216,200
6. Doyle Brunson — 210,900
7. Shandoi Demjan — 209,000
8. Markus Ristola — 205,000
9. Ram Vaswani — 202,500
10. Jason Mercier — 202,300

When play resumes the field will be faced with 800/1,600 blinds and a 200 chip ante, so there is still a lot of poker to be played. Other players still in the running include: John Juanda (39k), Antonio Esfandiari (173k), Barry Schulman (111k), and Annette Obrestad (90k).

When play resumes at noon today, poker fans will be greeted by a star-studded final table that includes two World Series of Poker ‘November Nine’ members (Antoine Saout and James Akenhead), the founder of Cardplayer Magazine whose son Jeff is another member of the ‘November Nine’ (Barry Schulman), a Poker Hall of Fame nominee (Daniel Negreanu), and one of the top up-and-coming poker players in the world (Jason Mercier).

The other players will have their work cut out for them catching up to chip-leader Mercier who has almost 1/3 of the chips in play, and almost a 2.5 to 1 chip advantage over his closest competitor, James Akenhead.

The complete chip-counts and seat assignments are as follows:

Seat 1: Barry Shulman – 1,090,000
Seat 2: Jason Mercier – 3,198,000
Seat 3: Praz Bansi – 1,160,000
Seat 4: Markus Ristola – 784,000
Seat 5: Chris Bjorin – 518,000
Seat 6: James Akenhead – 1,398,000
Seat 7: Daniel Negreanu – 438,000
Seat 8: Antoine Saout – 701,000
Seat 9: Matt Hawrilenko – 674,000

After a long, back-and-forth heads-up battle, Cardplayer owner Barry Shulman came away victorious at the WSOPE Main Event. The victory marks Shulman’s second WSOP title, the first coming in 2001 when he captured the $1,500 7-Card-Stud hi/lo bracelet.

Negreanu battled all day long, and had a few chances to win the tournament: Most notably when he and Shulman were both all-in on the flop; Negreanu holding pocket Aces for an over-pair, Shulman with the nut-flush-draw. A few hands later it was Shulman who had the pocket Aces, and Negreanu had unfortunately flopped top-pair.

The 2nd place finish did propel Negreanu into the top spot on the all-time money list: The honor will likely be short-lived as Phil Ivey is nipping on his heels going into the WSOP Final Table this November.

Shulman’s son, Jeff, is also a member of the WSOP Final Table, and will have his work cut out for him if he wants to one-up ‘Pops’!

The WSOP & Harrah’s Entertainment have released the completed schedule for the 2009-2010 WSOP Circuit series. Over the next 8 months the tour will take up residence at eleven different Harrah’s-owned properties across the USA, starting the series with a visit to the always popular Horseshoe Hammond (Indiana) Chicago in October 2009, and rounding off the whole series with it’s regular final WSOPC stop in New Orleans, for almost 14 days in May 2010.

The tour will be stopping at several famous venues along the way and has also added a new venue at Harrah’s St.Louis in April 2010, there will be two visits to Atlantic city over the next year but this will be at two different venues and will take place in December and March respectively.

There is also a period during the summer months where the Schedule becomes non-stop as the tour goes from venue to venue without a day’s break in between this is all in conjunction with the build up and start of the World Series Of Poker 2010.

The complete schedule (though subject to change) for the 2009-2010 World Series of Poker Circuit Series:

October 16 – October 25, 2009
Horseshoe Hammond (IN, Chicago area)
October 23 – November 2, 2009
Horseshoe Southern Indiana (near Louisville, KY)
November 5 – November 15, 2009
Harvey’s Lake Tahoe (NV)
December 4 – December 20, 2009
Harrah’s Atlantic City (NJ)
January 20 – February 11, 2010
Harrah’s Tunica (MS)
February 18 – March 2, 2010
Horseshoe Council Bluffs (IA)
March 3 – March 14, 2010
Caesars Atlantic City (NJ)

There are quite a few changes in store for anyone checking out the 2010 WSOP schedule: The tournament series will still feature 57 tournaments, but there seems to be a new emphasis on lower buy-in, and larger buy-in events.

* The $50k HORSE tournament has been replaced with the $50k Players Championship –an 8-game mix featuring a final table of strictly No Limit Holdem—which will put the event with the largest buy-in back into ESPN’s TV schedule. The HORSE tournament is now one of the $10k Championship Events.

* A $25k 6-Max No Limit Holdem event has been added in an effort to cash in on the short-handed trend that is sweeping the high-stakes online poker games.

* Last year’s $1,000 tournament was such a success that the 2010 schedule boasts six of these events –one will be held each week for five weeks, and the final $1,000 tournament will be held on July 2nd—all of the $1k events will be No Limit Holdem.

If you’re like me you probably don’t feel like waiting around until Tuesday night to see ESPN’s telecast of the WSOP final table. Fortunately there are several websites who will be bringing you live updates:

* The Full Tilt Poker pros have set up a page where you will not only get live updates, but will also see “tweets” from the many Tilters who use twitter.

Full Tilt WSOP Coverage

* BLUFF media and the WSOP official site www.wsop.com has a variety of update options: Twitter feeds, exclusive updates, and even a live pop-out window with chip counts and such. You can also listen to live, hand-by-hand commentary on BLUFF poker radio.

WSOP Live Updates

* Cardplayer’s coverage of the 2009 WSOP final table will not only feature their terrific updates, but with Editor Jeff Shulman at the final table the poker publication has an inside source in the tournament. Shulman will be giving fans live “tweets” from the table, which could be very interesting depending on how he is running.

WSOP Live Updates

Jeff Shulman’s Tweets

Play Online Poker

has announced they will once again be running an invitation-only tournament at the 2010 World Series of Poker. This will mark the first time since 2006 that the WSOP will feature the Tournament of Champions, but unlike the three previous TOC’s the 2010 version will take place in the midst of the World Series of Poker festivities.

Harrah’s is putting up the entire $1 million prize-pool –with $500,000 going to the winner—and 20 of the 27 players will be voted in by fans at wsop.com. The remaining seven slots will be filled by the three previous TOC winners, Mike Sexton, Mike Matusow, and Annie Duke as well as the reigning WSOP and WSOPE champions, Joe Cada and Barry Shulman. The final two spots will be filled by qualifiers, most likely from an online tournament.

The tournament will be played on June 27th, with the final table taking place on July 4th. ESPN will air the TOC as a two-hour episode on August 3rd.

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