Tournament coverage Poker

The Railbird report

Written by Railbird Ronny

This article first appeared in the Sep/Oct 2011 issue of World Gaming magazine.

The annual World Series of Poker held from late May to mid July is by far the biggest poker event in the world, and 2010 was it’s 42nd year. Each year, skilled, and some purely just optimistic, poker players flock to Las Vegas with dreams of wearing a multi-million US dollar gold and diamond bracelet. Even the unfortunate events of Black Friday did not deter poker players from playing the mind sport they have come to love. 6,865 players from 85 different nations descended upon the Rio hotel and casino for eight days of play in the US$10,000 buy-in main event. More than 500,000 hands were dealt before the new class of the “November Nine” was inaugurated*. Each finalist is already guaranteed a minimum of US$782,115 prize money and the eventual World Champion of Poker stands to claim US$8,711,956. Not a bad week at the office.

Kenny Shih

Kenny Shih

Asia Pacific’s most successful player in this year’s WSOP main event was Kenny Shih, a 30 year old poker pro, originally from the finance industry. Kenny hails from Taipei, and he arrived in Vegas with just US$5,000 in his pocket. He took down a tournament at another Vegas casino and entered the main event for the very first time. What a smart play, because that turned out to be a very lucrative decision as he finished 18th overall and pocketed US$378,796 in prize money. Xiao long bao on Kenny next time!

Be sure to watch this space in future issues of World Gaming for all your tournament info and don’t forget you can always find tournament coverage at www.wgm8.com.

Check out Railbird Ronny’s Tourney Tracker (under the poker menu) list for a list of previous results and upcoming tournaments of particular interest to Asian and Australian poker players and fans.

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*Called November Nine because the final table consists of the final nine players. There is a 108 day recess before play continues on November 5 to 7.