World Series of Poker Event #29, No-Limit Hold'em, 15-17 June 2008

Entrants: 716
Buy in: $3,000
Prize pool: $1,976,160

Final results:
1. John Phan, $434,789
2. Johnny Neckar, $277,452
3. Matt Vengrin, $167,973
4. Alex Bolotin, $137,343
5. David Singer, $112,641
6. Stewart Newman, $88,927
7. Thuyen Doan, $69,165
8. George Dunst, $54,344
9. Sebastian Segovia, $39,523

The $3,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em tournament attracted a highly-competitive field of 716 entries, creating a prize pool totaling $1,976,160. The top 72 finishers collected prize money.

The winner was poker pro John Phan. He is 33-years-old and lives in Stockton, CA. Phan was born in Vietnam. He has been playing poker professionally for about 12 years.

Phan collected $434,789 for first place. He also earned his first WSOP gold bracelet. Prior to this victory, Phan had two runner-up finishes in WSOP events in 2006 and 2007. He also finished fourth in an event in 2005.

Phan’s heads-up match against Johnny Neckar clocked in at 6 hours and 13 minutes, which certainly ranks as one of the longer matches in WSOP history. However, this did not come close to threatening the all-time record set in 2006 between Chip Reese and Andy Bloch, which lasted over eight hours. The entire final table took slightly over ten hours to complete.

Afterward, Phan was almost dismissive of the significance of his victory. Although he had finally won a WSOP gold bracelet after coming close several times, he stated that he one and only goal in poker remains to win the WSOP Main Event. Oddly enough, while Phan was trying to explain himself, he had a bracelet affixed to his wrist from another poker tournament – which was awarded to him for winning a major tournament at the Jack Binion World Poker Open in 2007.

Phan later explained his odd decision to “gamble” for the gold bracelet (moving all-in dark on three hands) by saying, “What can I say? I love to gamble. To me, gambling is what it’s all about.”

A more serious side of Phan’s personality came out later when he revealed that he intends to donate some of his cash prize to charity, and specifically the hometown in Vietnam where he still has relatives.

Through the conclusion of Event #29, the player with the highest percentage of cashes (minimum of six events played) is Kathy Liebert at 62.5 percent. Liebert has entered a total of eight events and cashed in five.

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 four cashes. However, Daniel Negreanu is now close in points, along with Vanessa Selbst and Jacobo Fernandez.

All WSOP images are supplied by "IMPDI for the 2008 WSOP"