World Poker Finals at Foxwoods Starts Wednesday

Foxwoods Resort and Casino stands like an oasis in the middle of the Connecticut countryside, a Mecca to gambling and a lifestyle that people who love to walk to halls of casinos appreciate annually by the thousands.

And tomorrow, the World Poker Tour films the seventh major poker tournament to take place there when the World Poker Finals championship event starts, a tournament that always attracts some of the best players in the world.

CardPlayer.com's entire tournament reporting team will be on hand at Foxwoods to cover all of the hands, conduct interviews, and report from the tournament floor. Click here for the World Poker Finals tournament-results and live-updates page (this page will be flooded with updates as soon as the event begins).

Foxwoods was one of the handful of casinos to first sign on to the WPT, and they're relationship has been solid from the get-go. Foxwoods even opened a World Poker Tour-themed room last year when it expanded its poker room from around 75 tables to 115 tables to accommodate the large poker crowd that floods the casino daily.

"Foxwoods Resort Casino was the very first casino to sign on to the World Poker Tour and that helped us secure the other six original charter member casinos, which in turn made the show a huge success and created the phenomenon that televised poker is today," said Steve Lipscomb, Founder, President & CEO of WPT Enterprises. "They took a chance and since signing on in season one, Foxwoods has continually proven to be an incredible partner in business, promotion, and the all important task of creating the best possible player experience."

WPT poker started at Foxwoods in November of 2002, when 89 players showed up to play in the sixth event that WPT had ever filmed. The final table of the first World Poker Finals was one of the strongest in WPT history. Howard Lederer eventually beat Layne Flack, Phil Ivey, Andy Bloch, Peter Giordano, and Ron Rose. He won $345,000.

It only took a year for the number of entrants to more than triple. In 2003, 313 players tried to follow in Lederer's footsteps. This time, Hoyt Corkins, Phil Hellmuth, Mohamed Ibrahim, Chris Ackerman, V.S. Senthil Kumar, and Brian Haveson met on the now-famous WPT final-table set. Corkins won the event, taking home a little more than $1 million back to Alabama.

In 2004, the number of entrants again more than doubled, to 674, generating a prize pool of $6.765 million, of which more than $1.5 million went to the winner, Tuan Le. Heads up, he beat amateur player and accountant Temp Hutter. Humberto Brenes, Bradley Berman, J.C. Tran, and David Pham also sat at the final table.

The World Poker Finals in 2005 again showed that cream tends to rise at Foxwoods, despite another increase in field size to 783 entrants. That year, the final table consisted of Allen Cunningham, Nick Schulman, Bill Gazes, Lyle Berman, Lenny Cortellino, and Tony Licastro. Schulman ended up winning the event and its $2.1 million top prize.

Last year, attendance dropped to 609 players, which generated a first-place prize of more than $1.7 million. Nenad Medic won the event, and he had to face a tough final table made of Mimi Tran, Kathy Liebert, E.G. Harvin, Michael Omelchuk, and Mike Perry.

Starting in the fourth season of the WPT, which began in May of 2005, a second Foxwoods WPT event was added. The first Foxwoods Poker Classic would take place in April of 2006. It attracted 461 entrants and was won by Victor Ramdin.

The second Foxwoods Poker Classic took place this April. It attracted 415 entrants and was won by Raj Patel.

The historic prize pools of the championship events of the World Poker Finals come to a combined $17,673,681.

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