Final table T-minus 1.5 hours and couting

Scroll down through this post for final table chip counts, final prize money, and instructions on how to read the near-real-time blog.

For the next few hours, this is going to be an information blog and little more. My intention is to provide near-real-time updates as the final table progresses. In essence, you're going to see my notes as I take them.

The video-taping of the final table is scheduled to begin at 11am EST. The World Poker Tour is taping this table outdoors which is causing us in the internet world some amount of technical difficulty. Unlike the tournament up to this point in which I had but a few yards between me and the nearest high-speed router, now I'm going to be hanging on by a ethereal thread and hoping my posts go through.

That also means that PokerStars.com will be unable to simulcast the event like it has in the past. With that in mind, unless you're the type of person who likes to wait for information, this is going to be the closest you're going to get to a live broadcast.

While things tend to change every few minutes around here, my intention is to do this: I'm going to start one post at the beginning of the tournament and update that single post as we go along. So, if you're sitting at home or in your office, just sit back and hit refresh. The newest information should be at the top. Or wait until it's over and read froom the bottom up.


Seat 1: John Gale, England (gizzimow) $1,330,000
Seat 2: Patrick Hocking, Medford, OR, USA (The Hawk) $527,000
Seat 3: Nenad Medic, Niagra Falls, Canada (serb2127) $142,000
Seat 4: Mikael Westerlund, Gothenburg, Sweden $1,072,000
Seat 5: Miami John Cernuto, Las Vegas, NV $291,000
Seat 6: Alex Balandin, New York, (ignatiusj) $1,261,000

First place: $865,600 plus $25,000 seat into WPT Championship
Second place: $484,700
Third place: $306,400
Fourth place: $207,700
Fifth place: $155,800
Sixth place: $112,500