Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Youngest final table in history should mean excitement at the World Series of Poker

Jonathan Duhamel, a 22-year old from Montreal, owns nearly one-third of the chips in play

WSOP Final Table

Justin M. Bowen

The final table of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event plays down from 10 to nine players on the last day of competition in July. The “November Nine” will play for the championship bracelet and $8.9 million Saturday afternoon at the Rio.

Chip Counts

Main Event Payouts

  • 1st — $8,944,138
  • 2nd — $5,545,855
  • 3rd — $4,129,979
  • 4th — $3,092,497
  • 5th — $2,332,960
  • 6th — $1,772,939
  • 7th — $1,356,708
  • 8th — $1,045,738
  • 9th — $811,823

The average age of the nine players at last year’s World Series of Poker Main Event final table was 34.

This year, there’s only one player who is older than 30. With poker’s rise in popularity, live tournaments have become a young men’s game in recent years.

That will be evident on poker’s grandest stage at noon Saturday at the Rio when the youngest final table in Main Event history plays for the world championship bracelet and $8.9 million. The nine players are an average of 26 years old.

“It’s a decent portrait of where poker is at today,” ESPN poker commentator Lon McEachern said. “It’s a bunch of young, aggressive players.”

Peter Eastgate became the youngest champion in the history of the Main Event at 22 years old in 2008. Joe Cada followed suit and broke the record last year as a 21-year-old.

But both Eastgate and Cada navigated through final tables of older, more experienced players. That won’t be the case this year, as Cuong “Soi” Nguyen comes in as both the oldest player at 37 years old and the only amateur.

He is also eighth in chips with only 9.6 million, meaning someone in their 20s will likely become poker’s world champion for the third straight year.

In poker, youth often means aggression. That was certainly the case for this group during the eight days in July they spent outlasting 7,310 other entrants in the Main Event.

Players like the two chip leaders, 22-year-old Jonathan Duhamel and 24-year-old John Dolan, applied constant pressure with less than premium hands to overpower opponents. Expect massive raises, re-raises and momentum swings all the way until the Main Event is down to two players who will meet Monday night for the championship.

“We thought that poker and excitement was an oxymoron,” said Ty Stewart, vice president of the World Series of Poker. “But not so at the final table. It’s going to be a wild scene.”

In addition to the action at the table, the Penn & Teller Theater features a raucous environment during play. Most players bring large cheering sections full of family and friends.

The player who will likely be the crowd favorite is Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, a 29-year-old poker professional from Miami. “Grinder” chants were heard throughout the Rio all summer with good reason.

Mizrachi, one of the best poker players in the world, made three final tables and won the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship at the World Series of Poker. The Main Event is the only tournament more prestigious than the Player’s Championship, giving Mizrachi the unfathomable chance to win both in the same year.

Mizrachi, who has nearly $10 million in career tournament earnings, enters seventh in chips with a number of notable pros ahead of him. That group includes 23-year-old Joseph Cheong from Southern California and 24-year-old John Racener from South Florida. Both have won World Series of Poker Circuit Event championships.

“Everybody has a solid game,” Duhamel said after the final table was set in July. “If you make even one mistake, it’s going to cost you and you will lose your chips.”

In an event that always seems difficult to forecast, this year’s version appears downright unpredictable.

“Nobody knows anything,” ESPN poker commentator Norman Chad said. “And if they say otherwise, they are lying to you.”

Case Keefer can be reached at 948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.

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