World Series of Poker Event #32, No Limit Hold’em, 17-19 June 2008

Entrants: 2,304
Buy in: ,500
Prize pool: ,144,960

Final results:
1. Luis Velador, 4,734
2. Anthony Signore, 6,387
3. Osmin Dardon, 3,734
4. Jae Chung, 4,422
5. Shane Stacey, 6,682
6. Dean Bui, 2,088
7. Dany Georges, 0,638
8. Utsab Saha, ,051
9. Justin Hoffman, ,464

The ,500 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em championship attracted another huge field as 2,304 entries created a prize pool totaling ,144,960. The top 198 finishers collected prize money.

The winner was 44-year-old professional poker player Luis Velador, from Lake Elsinore, CA, and has been playing professionally for 11 years.

Velador collected 4,734 for first place. He also earned his first WSOP gold bracelet. Velador has only played in three WSOP events. He has cashed in all three. In fact, Velador played in the 2006 and 2007 Main Events, and cashed both times!

Velador‘s performance was as dominant as has been seen by any player at this year’s WSOP, to date. From start to finish during the five-hour final table, Velador held at least a 2 to 1 chip advantage over his nearest adversary. Most of the time, he had every opponent at the table covered by a 5 or 6 to 1 margin.

“There is lot of dead money in these tournaments,” Velador said. “Sure, there are many good players, too. But these (lower buy-in tournaments) are not like the big ones where all you see is pros.”

“I got hit by the deck yesterday,” Velador stated – in reference to his dominance during the last half of the tournament.

The second-place finisher was Anthony Signore, from Boynton Beach, FL. Amazingly, this was Signore’s first time to enter a major poker tournament. He collected 6,387.

Eleven-time WSOP gold bracelet winner and 1989 world poker champion Phil Hellmuth recorded his 65th career WSOP cash by finishing 71st in this event. Hellmuth continues to distance himself from the competition, as second-place Men “the Master” Nguyen is now eight cashes behind Hellmuth, with 57 to his credit.

Through Event #32, the player who has entered the most WSOP events is Tom McCormick, a.k.a. “The Shamrock Kid” – with 23 entries.

Through Event #32, fourteen players have made two WSOP final table appearances this year. This list includes – Chris Bjorin, Andy Bloch, Alex Bolotin, David Benyamine, Scott Clements, Jacobo Fernandez, Fu Wong, Barry Greenstein, Erick Lindgren, Minh Ly, Daniel Negreanu, David Singer, J.C. Tran, and Theo Tran.

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