David Chiu just won $3.3M at the Five Star World Classic Poker Classic / WPT World Championship Season 6. He’s no stranger to the winner’s circle, having seven first-place finishes in his career, including four WSOP bracelets. He already had $2.6M in tournament earnings before the WPT Championship, and is considered one of the best limit holdem players in the world.
Chiu is also considered to be one of the best pros at reading opponents. He attributes this to a swimming accident that left him partially deaf. He had to start to watch people more closely for their reactions, and brought this skill to the poker table.
He had seven cashes last year, for over $100,000 in winnings in many different poker variations including no-limit holdem, pot limit Omaha, 7 Card Stud and H.O.R.S.E. He’s made numerous televised appearances, but the WPT win will put him with the elite in the game.
Some of the best poker players in the world are out and only the strongest left in this tournament remain. Amir Vahedi is your chip leader…for now. Day 4 at the 2008 WPT Championship is now down to 17 players or two tables. Here are the players’ names and their chip counts:
Table 53
1. Kenny Tran - 1,442,000
2. Amir Vahedi - 3,907,000
3. Bryan Devonshire - 984,000
4. Jeff King - 1,903,000
5. Tommy Le - 1,950,000
6. Cory Carroll - 1,346,000
7. John Roveto - 556,000
8. Jeff Shulman - 473,000
Table 54
1. Karga Holt - 1,500,000
2. David Chiu - 1,742,000
3. Tom ‘Durrrr’ Dwan - 2,874,000
4. Andrew Black - 411,000
5. Gus Hansen - 2,929,000
6. David Tran - 2,543,000
7. Nick Binger - 701,000
8. Robert Mizrachi - 1,079,000
9. Michael Gracz - 1,674,000
If you had to pick a winner, who would it be?
David “The Dragon” Pham had 16 cashes in 2006, including six final tables and three wins. After a year like that, no one expected David to do what he did in 2007. Last year he improved to 17 cashes, 11 of them final tables, with four of them being wins. He won over $1.8M in tournament play, and was the CardPlayer Player of the Year for 2007.
David is a cousin to poker star Men “The Master” Nguyen. He came to the country as a refugee aboard a boat fleeing Vietnam when he was 17. His lifetime stats are as impressive as his 2007 stats, with over $7.2M in tournament earnings in the last seven years. Always a contender for Player of the Year, Pham won the prestigious award in 2000 as well. He has two WSOP bracelets and five WPT final tables, but has not won one yet.
1. David Pham won his second Player of the Year honor and $1.8M in earnings this year.
2. J.C. Tran was second in POY standings and earned $2.9M this year.
3. Jonathan Little earned $2.5M in tournament winnings including a WPT win in May.
4. Tom Schneider earned $733,589 including 2 WSOP bracelets in 2007.
5. Scott “BigRisky” Clements won over $2.2M and finished fourth in the POY standings.
6. Scotty Nguyen won over $800,000 and had seven final tables this year.
7. William “Bill” Edler won over $2.7M including a WSOP bracelet and a WPT championship.
8. David Fox won almost $700,000 including a WPT Finals event in November.
9. David “Devilfish” Ulliott has won over $1.2M this year including two WPT wins.
10. Jerry Yang won the WSOP main event and over $8M, he makes the list because he becomes the second-largest tournament prize winner in history.
The explosion in the popularity of poker the last few years has seen everything that can somehow be attached to the game marketed and sold. This includes books, games, calendars, cards and even poker camps.
It may seem like a novelty idea, but poker camps have become very popular and are big business recently. A number of professional poker players either run their own camp or are affiliated with one in some way. Howard Lederer helps run Poker Reality Camp, Camp Hellmuth is run by Phil Hellmuth and even Doyle Brunson got in on the act with his son Todd Brunson in the Super System Poker Camp. One of the most popular and well-known camps is the WPT Boot Camp run by the same people that produce the World Poker Tour.
With a wide range of admission fees (from as low as $1,500 to as high as $3,500 and up), is it worth shelling out the cash? It’s worth noting that anyone who thinks they can’t learn a few things from a poker pro is a fool, and deserves to keep making mistakes at the table. Internet message boards indicate that most poker players (novice or experts) find the camps well worth the time and money because of the close interaction with the pros and the close attention paid to skills that are actually helpful at the table. If you do have a couple extra grand, attending a poker camp may be a good investment to improve your game and win more cash.
Two poker players that have gone bad are Mike “The Mouth” Matusow and Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott. Both have done time; Matusow for drugs and refusal to wear a wire, and Ulliott for robbery and assault. Matusow was in prison from September 2004 to April 2005. While he was in there he lost $250,000 that he had won in a WPT event on sports betting, and had to be staked once he got out of the clink.
Dave Ulliott was a real bad boy. He was a member of a safe-cracking team and spent time behind bars in England on numerous occasions. After a friend’s wife convinced him to go straight, he has become one of the best poker players in the world.
Both have changed their evil ways now and have learned from their wild ways. Both have won millions playing poker and don’t need to break any laws anymore.
