Los Angeles professional player Tuan Le (37) has done it again; for the second year running he has taken down the World Series of Poker $10,000 buy-in triple draw deuce-to-seven lowball championship in Las Vegas, besting a field of 109 players to claim his second WSOP winner’s bracelet and prize money of $322,756.
In defending his title this year Le came up against some of the biggest names in the game, emerging victorious with his special brand of aggression and audacity. On the final table alone there were four WSOP gold bracelet holders.
Le took on the final table as chip leader, facing Max Casal, Ismael Bojang, Phil Galfond, James Obst, Rep Porter and Calvin Anderson, and worked his way methodically through the pack of aces to engage California pro Max Casal in the heads up.
Despite a heroic effort by Casal, which at one point saw him draw even in chips, Le appeared unstoppable, racking up a 19 to 1 chip advantage before final eliminating Casal, sending him home with a second-placing check for $199,438… his biggest win yet.
The rest of the final table cashed as follows:
Ismael Bojang $130,851
Phil Galfond $89,939
James Obst $63,863
Rep Porter $46,813
Calvin Anderson $35,389
In related news, the World Series of Poker has posted some interesting statistics from what is surely the world’s biggest live tournament to date – the $565 buy-in Colossus, which is currently at final table stage with Adi Prasetyo leading the nine survivors.
* 22,374 official entrants – the highest number of players ever to take part in a single live tournament.
* Previous record – WSOP main event 2006, which attracted 8,773 entries…smaller than Colossus by 255 percent.
* Prize pool of $11,187,000, which enables a record 2,241 players to cash a minimum $1,096. That represents the most players cashing in a major tournament; the previous record was 873 in the 2006 Main Event.
* Entries far eclipse the live attendances at the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight (16,800); the NBA’s record-breaking season average attendance of 17,826 or the National Hockey League’s average attendance of 17,443.
* Colossus will pay the largest first-place prize for a $500 buy-in event at $638,880.
* Best single-day attendance with 12,172 entries was last Saturday. The second-largest single-day attendance was Friday with 10,202 players.
* 111,870,000, the total number of chips in play for this event.
* Number of dealers: 982.
* Number of card decks used: 4,480.