The chip leader of the poker players who reached the final table of the Main Event of World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2012 is Jesse Sylvia, aged 26.
The huge player field of WSOP 2012 Main Table reduced to just nine players, a group that is referred to as the October Nine, a few hours back.
These nine poker pros are the last people left standing of the WSOP 2012 Main Event, which lasted throughout the previous week. Interestingly, two women poker players finished 10th and 11th.
The players who reached the final tables are, surprisingly, little known. This is the first time in the history of WSOP Main Event that its final table is populated by relatively unknown poker players. The most interesting thing about these final table players is that there is not much of a difference in their chip-stack sizes. Greg Merson, one of the players comprising October Nine, is aiming at bagging yet another WSOP bracelet. Merson made headlines by winning nearly $1.1 million when he emerged as the last man standing of WSOP Event #57 recently.
Women poker players Gaelle Baumann and Elisabeth Hille narrowly missed making it to the October Nine. If things had turned out a bit differently, one of them would have been the first woman poker player in the past 17 years to reach the final table of the WSOP Main Event. Hille was short stacked on the last day, and Baumann was playing cautiously.
However, Hille finished 11th and Baumann found herself as the only female poker player in the table of ten.
If Baumann was not eliminated in the 10th position, she would have been the first woman poker player to reach the final table ever since Barbara Enright reached the Main Event final table in 1995.
On the fourth day of the event, a call made by a floor person contributed a lot to Gaelle losing her final table seat and an entry into the book of records. This call has already been termed as among the most controversial calls in the history of the WSOP Main Event.
Here is a list of the nine players who reached the WSOP Main Event final table, along with their chip counts. The October Nine are Jesse Sylvia (43,875,000), Andras Koroknai (29,375,000), Greg Merson (28,725,000), Russell Thomas (24,800,000), Steven Gee (16,860,000), Michael Esposito (16,260,000), Robert Salaburu (15,155,000), Jacob Balsiger (13,115,000), and Jeremy Ausmus (9,805,000).
