Hardly has the previous day’s excitement over his million dollar win in the Prima Monte Carlo Millions died down at the weekend, when consummate poker champ Phil Ivey was in the news with another big win – this one in the Full Tilt Poker Invitational in Monte Carlo.
Televised live by Fox News, the seven champion players sat down to business at midnight local time to make the US evening live TV shows, with comperes Howard “The Professor” Lederer and Barry Tompkins.
Advanced technology was deployed in the tournament, with microchips implanted on the cards so that a computer could read each hand. In another innovation, percentages were displayed along with the cards in play. Allied to the highly professional camera work that viewers have now come to expect from these big money tournaments, it gave the show real edge and plenty of class.
The champs around the table were David “Devilfish” Ulliot, Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, Phil Helmuth, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Gus “The Great Dane” Hansen, John Juanda and Phil Ivey.
The first casualty came after two hours of intense play when Matusow went out after a run of bad cards. Phil Helmuth was next followed by Gus Hansen at fifth.
The final four continued, battling it out to get in the money of the first three placings. Ferguson was pipped at the bubble and went out empty handed in the number four spot. Ulliot was next with a consolation third place prize of $120 000 and Juanda and Ivey’s tussle for the top prize was not much longer, Ivey truimphing and taking the top $600 000 money, with Juanda second on $ 280 000.
Ivey, in two tense days had added $1.6 million to his bank balance. What a Thanksgiving Weekend!