A Look At The 2019 World Series Of Poker Main Event Final Table NineNine Players Gunning For $10 Million First-Place Prize |
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The 50th annual World Series of Poker main event final table is set, and will play out over three days at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas starting Sunday night on ESPN.
Here’s a closer look at the nine players who will be battling it out for the $10 million first-place prize.
Seat 1 – Hossein Ensan – 177,000,000
Ensan is not only the tournament’s biggest stack, entering the final table with nearly as many chips as the bottom six competitors combined, but he is also among the more experienced players remaining. Ensan has tournament cashes dating back to 2013, but has been playing poker since he emigrated from Iran to Germany in 1990. The self-described amateur used to be a painter before finding poker.
Ensan finished third in the EPT Barcelona main event back in 2014 for $860,091, and then followed that up with a sixth-place showing at EPT Malta in 2015 for another $166,262. After back-to-back wins at the EPT Grand Final in 2015, Ensan won the EPT Prague main event for $825,151. In 2017, Ensan won a WSOP Circuit event, taking down the main event in Rozvadov for $219,036.
Seat 2 – Nick Marchington – 20,100,000
Marchington is very new to poker, at least when it comes to live poker at the series. The 21-year-old pro from Hornchurch, Essex only has one cash on his tournament resume, which was a 19th-place showing in the $800 deepstack earlier this summer for $12,415.
The London resident dropped out of University to pursue poker, and the decision has so far proved to be lucrative. The short stack is guaranteed at least $1 million for making the final table. Should he be able to mount a comeback to win it all, he would be the first Brit ever and the first European since Martin Jacobson in 2014.
Seat 3 – Dario Sammartino – 33,400,000
Although he sits in the middle of the pack, nobody at the final table has more experience than Sammartino. The 32-year-old poker pro has a long list of big scores on his list, including a third-place finish in the $111,111 buy-in High Roller For One Drop back in 2017 for $1,608,295.
Sammartino also has numerous final tables at the EPT Grand Final and PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, although he has had trouble closing out wins in the past. In total, the Italian poker pro and former StarCraft standout has more than $8 million in career earnings. If he finishes third or better in the main event, he’ll overtake Mustapha Kanit for no. 1 on Italy’s all-time money list.
Seat 4 – Kevin Maahs – 43,000,000
Maahs enters the final table in a relatively comfortable situation in fourth place, although the hostile environment may not be so comfortable for the 27-year-old who has no other WSOP cashes to learn from.
The Chicago, Illinois player has, however, been a relatively consistent player on the smaller circuits, and has played often in the Midwest at WSOP Circuit, Mid-States Poker Tour, and Heartland Poker Tour events. His best score is $20,625 for finishing second in a HPT tournament. Maahs picked up a crucial double with 11 players left in the tournament through Skrbic with pocket aces to secure his spot at the final table.
Seat 5 – Timothy Su – 20,200,000
Timothy Su was the talk of the tournament for a bit after his fearless move with an open-ended straight draw cracked the aces of high roller Sam Greenwood, one of the best players left in the main event. The 25-year-old software engineer was riding high on that momentum until a clash with Ensan in a 116 million chip pot sent him spiraling down the leaderboard.
Su, originally from Allentown, Pennsylvania, now works in Boston at a tech startup. The avid bicyclist and musician has just a handful of tournament cashes on his player profile, but will be pursuing life-changing money if he can find a quick double up. Both he and Marchington are essentially tied for last place in the chip counts, but each will start the final table with at least 20 big blinds.
Seat 6 – Zhen Cai – 60,600,000
Cai has been playing poker since discovering the game in college while at the University of Florida. The 35-year-old spent years dealing the cards before switching to a full-time player, and excels in pot-limit Omaha. In fact, Cai won the pot-limit Omaha deep stack event at the Lucky Hearts Poker Open last year.
The Florida-native also has a WSOP Circuit ring, having taken down a no-limit hold’em tournament at the 2011 Regional Championship in New Orleans. Cai will be leaning on the experience of his good friend Tony Miles, who finished runner-up in last year’s main event to John Cynn for $5 million.
Seat 7– Garry Gates – 99,300,000
It’s been more than a decade since Gates started at the WSOP, but as a poker reporter, not a player. The Titusville, Pennsylvania native got his start as a tournament reporter before being hired by PokerStars as an events manager and the senior consultant for player affairs. As a result, he is a well-known face among poker industry insiders.
But despite his work off the felt, Gates has proven over the years that he is no pushover when it comes to playing the game either. Gates has now cashed in the $10,000 main event four times. He previously finished 898th, 247th, 173rd, and now enters the final table in second place overall. Gates also has a WSOP Circuit main event final table on his tournament resume, where he finished fourth for $64,530.
Seat 8 – Milos Skrbic – 23,400,000
Skrbic might not be a household name in the poker world, but he has proven over the last couple years to be a force to be reckoned with. The Serbian poker pro dabbled in smaller buy-in tournaments in Europe from 2011 until 2017, when the bigger scores started coming.
After taking sixth in the Bellagio Cup, the Sremska Mitrovica resident finished fifth in the WSOP Europe main event in 2018 for $275,054. In December later that year, Skrbic took second in the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic main event at Bellagio for $1,087,603 and just earlier this summer, he won a deepstack event at the Venetian. If he finished eighth place or higher, he’ll jump Andjelko Andrejevic on Serbia’s all-time money list.
Seat 9 – Alex Livingston – 37,800,000
Livingston is a former chess champion turned poker pro, who splits his time between Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Las Vegas. The 32-year-old picked up poker while attending Tufts University in Boston.
Incredibly, this was not Livingston’s first deep run in the WSOP main event. The Canadian managed to finish 13th in the 2013 main event, eventually won by Ryan Riess. He’s more than doubled that $451,398 payout with his second run in the main event, regardless of what happens at the final table this week. Livingston was already having a relatively solid summer, having finished ninth in the $1,500 eight-game mix event, and seventh in the $2,500 mixed eight-or-better event.
For more coverage from the summer series, check out the 2019 WSOP landing page, complete with a full schedule, results, news, player interviews, and event recaps.
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