News / nono / 16 June 2008 / Leave a comment

12 facts about the WSOP Event 24, $2,500 Pot-Limit Holdem/Omaha, where 13 of the 45 players in the cash were European, that you may not have known.

• Through the conclusion of Event #24 at this year's World Series of Poker, the gold bracelet count by nations and states reads as follows:
8 - Nevada
4 - New York
2 - California
2 - Canada
2 - Missouri
1 - Germany
1 - Italy
1 - Maryland
1 - Michigan
1 -- Pennsylvania
1 - South Carolina

• Through the conclusion of Event #24 at this year's World Series of Poker, the "Professionals versus Amateurs" gold bracelet scoreboard reads:
Professionals - 18 wins
Amateurs - 4 wins
Semi-Pros - 2 wins

• The $2,500 buy-in Half-Pot-Limit Omaha / Half-Pot-Limit Hold'em championship attracted 457 entries. The total prize pool amounted to $1,051,100. The top 45 finishers collected prize money.

• This is the first time this event has ever been included on the WSOP schedule. While many "mixed game" tournaments have taken place in the 39-year history of the WSOP, these two games had not been combined together exclusively until this tournament. A similar event last year proved successful, as a Half-Pot-Limit Omaha / Half-Omaha High-Low Split tournament was scheduled.

• Pot-Limit poker is generally more popular in Europe than the United States and elsewhere. Many of the top players in England, Ireland, France, and elsewhere specialize in this form of poker. Not surprisingly, 13 of the 45 players who cashed in this tournament were Europeans - and an Italian player ended up winning the title.

• The tournament was played over three consecutive days. On Day Three, the final table action took place on the secondary stage, near the ESPN feature table area, which was dealing out the conclusion of the $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em event.

• The second-place finisher was Kyle Kloeckner, from St. Louis, MO. Prior to turning to poker as his career, he was a college student who majored in philosophy.

• Five-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Allen Cunningham took fourth place.

• High-stakes cash game player Minh Ly took eighth place. This was his 12th career WSOP cash.

• Other former WSOP gold bracelet winners who cashed included Howard Lederer (12th) and Hilbert Shirey

• Through the conclusion of Event #24, only one player has cashed five times to date - Nikolay Evdakov, from Moscow, Russia. Evdakov is in serious contention to challenge the record set for "Most WSOP Cashes in a Single Year," shared by four players -- Michael Binger (2007), Chad Brown (2007), Phil Hellmuth, Jr. (2006), and Humberto Brenes (2006), with eight in-the-money strikes.

• The current Milwaukee's Best Light "Player of the Year" standings shows Erick Lindgren on top of the points list with one gold bracelet win and three cashes.