The 6th season of the World Poker Tour (WPT) has finally reached its climax with the 2008 championship tournament. The championship started on the 19th and will end on the 26th of April, so we are right in the middle of the action. The world’s best known poker professionals gathered at the Bellagio in Las Vegas for 7 days of intense poker play, and pokermaster.org has been following them closely. Here is an update straight from the tournament tables.

Day 1

The first two days (19th and 20th) both counted as the first day of the tournament, which was split into two parts (1a and 1b) to accommodate the many expected entrants. The tournament is a no-limit Texas Hold’em game with an open buy in of $25,000. The number of entrants came to some as a surprise, as only 545 players registered to the prestigious event (compared to last year’s 639). On the WPT official website (www.worldpokertour.com) the low number of entrants is being played down by the fact that this tournament features more professional poker players than any other in history. According to the site, over two thirds of the playing field was made up of tough professional competition. Many of the players on the field (both pros and newcomers) observed the same, pointing out how hard it was to accumulate chips during the first days.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day someone is bound to land on top, and at the end of day 1 (1a and 1b combined) it was Jeff King with 211,575 chips. Here was what the top-5 looked like at the end of ‘day 1’:

1. Jeff King (211,575)
2. Paul Chauderson (200,900)
3. Kenny Tran (193,025)
4. Robert Mizrachi (173,375)
5. Carlos Mortensen (172,075)

Day 2

Day 2 started at 12:00pm (yes, the people at WPT run a tight schedule), with the 421 survivors from the previous day. We’ll start with some of the surprising upsets. With so many pros playing each other, losing some was inevitable. Here is a partial list of pros who where knocked out: Erick Lindgren, Allen Kessler, Haralabos Voulgaris, and Freddy Deeb. Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi and David “The Dragon” Pham – who are both former Card Player Players of the year, Tuan Le and Alan Goehring – both former WPT champions. Joe Hachem, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Phil Hellmuth and Jerry Yang - all former WSOP main event champions – also said goodbye to the total prize pool of $13,216,250, and a $3.4 million first prize dream.

And of course, there are the winners as well. Though former WPT champ Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi was knocked out, he might want to stick around and see how his brother, Robert Mizrachi, fares during the next few days. Robert is current chip leader with 523,200 chips – a healthy 125,500 chips above Jayde Tran in 2nd place. Here are the top 5 at the end of day 2:

1. Robert Mizrachi (523,200)
2. Jayde Tran (406,700)
3. Eric Richards (399,500)
4. Bryan Devonshire (393,400)
5. Cory Carroll (384,700)

The average chip count is 145,000. There are 188 players left after the second day of play. It will also be interesting to follow last year’s champion, Carlos Mortensen, currently ranked 7th with 371,600 chips.

The WPT is widely credited for revolutionizing the world of poker by bringing Texas Hold’em to every household. Using ‘hole-cams’ and live-commentary-like sports broadcasting, WPT became a very popular TV show in no time, and poker became a mainstream pastime. The final table of the 2008 championship will be played on April 25th. It will air on August 25th, 2008.

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