The long-awaited Main Event, which will announce the World Champion of Poker started on 8th July to finally reach that thrilling moment, in which the names of the nine hopefuls, who will strive for the title and the first prize are already announced.
The 2017 Main Event kicked off 10 days ago, over which players were trying to survive in the poker battle. The field attracted 7 221 players, who appeared on the WSOP tables. They were all striving to reach the first place, but only 9 of them are really close to the victory. The championship finally reached that level, in which only 9 players will appear on the honorable final table.
The names of the players, who will compete for the title the World Champion of Poker are already announced. Unprecedented in the history of poker, 2 of all the 9 players will appear for a second time at a WSOP final table at the Main Event.
The first one is Antoine Saout, who appears to be seventh in chips. His previous appearance at the WSOP final table in 2009 as the first French-based poker player to be part of the final nine players. The other former Niner is Ben Lamb from the United States, who appeared at the WSOP final table in 2011. Currently, Lamb has the smallest stack of chips, taking the 9th position in the list.
A third former Niner was about to join the 2017 WSOP final table and that is Michael Ruane, who played at the WSOP final table last year. The appearance, or “re-appearance” of two former Niners will remain in the history of poker as an unparalleled occurrence.
Besides the two poker heavyweights, the final table will welcome 7 more players and these are Jack Sinclair (8th position), Damian Salas (6th position), followed by Dan Ott (5th position) and Bryan Piccioli (4th position). The first three positions are occupied by Benjamin Pollak as the third in chips, John Hesp with the second biggest stack of chips and Scott Blumstein, who is holding the chip-leading position so far.
This year the WSOP organizers decided to exclude the usual big gap of three months between the end of the tournaments and the Main Event, which means that this year the “November Nine” will be the “July Nine”, as the competition will start on 20th July. The winner will be crowned the World Champion of Poker on 22nd July.
This year’s WSOP Main Event will be easily remembered as one of the events, which attracted the highest number of players. But it definitely sets the record for the most players, who managed to bring home a cash prize. The number is as high as 1084 and it breaks the record of the previous year’s Main Event. In a couple of days the new World Champion of Poker will be crowned and send back home with a life-changing cash prize and honors.
