2007 World Series of Poker: Meet Your Final TableThe 2007 World Series of Poker has come down to the final table of 9 players, taken from a pool of 6,358. 5 of these individuals will be walking off with over a million dollars. The other 4 are guaranteed a few hundred thousand dollars each.
Leading the pack by the slimmest of margins: Philip Hilm. When Dane Gus Hansen busted out the other day as one of the last remaining professional players, it turns out that Denmark was still well represented a la Philip Hilm. He also represents the United Kingdom as someone who currently resides there. Hilm has some good history in EPT tournaments.
Tuan Lam had a stack of chips amounting to 21,315,000 heading into Tuesday's final showdown. The Vietnamese player may look like a kid but he's actually 40 years old and resides in Toronto, Canada. He's also a former poker dealer.
Jon Kalmar nearly blew it Sunday night. Leading just prior to 10 pm PST, Kalmar was struck down and nearly busted out. But by early Monday morning, he had regained his composure and control, finishing the day in 3rd place.
Kalmar represents online poker room Full Tilt Poker. It could have turned out so differently, according to Poker News. Kalmar was very close to leaving Las Vegas without even playing the main event. It seems that he decided to take one last shot at winning a seat by playing a super-satellite multi-table tournament. He finished in the top 17 of that event to win his seat and booked a few more nights at the hotel!
Raymond Rahme had over 16 mil in chips entering Tuesday's 2007 World Series of Poker finale.
Rahme, who is one of three players at the final table representing online poker room PokerStars, is a semi-retired entrepreneur from South Africa and is part of a television program that has followed him here to Vegas, according to Card Player Magazine. Rahme has a large contingent of South Africans here with him in Las Vegas and was responsible for breaking the final table bubble by busting the tenth place player after flopping a set of queens.
Lee Childs for much of Sunday night led the pack in chips. The 35-year-old software engineer who quit his job a month ago to play in the World Series of Poker, vaulted into the chip lead with 16 million when his ace of clubs and queen of spades hit a miracle four clubs for a flush against a player with an ace and king of spades.
"I made the wrong read, but we got there," Childs said later.
Childs is the leading US representative at the 2007 World Series of Poker final table.
Lee Watkinson is perhaps the best known and most successful sitting at the final table. He has amassed just over $1.4 mil in winnings over his lifetime of tournament poker play and could potentially double this number when all is said and done.
Lee Watkinson comes from the only state in the Union, Washington State, that makes playing poker online a Class C felony.
Hevad "Rain" Khan, another PokerStars living advertisement, is gaining a reputation for his aggressive and sometimes creative play. The Poughkeepsie, New York native has been making quite a spectacle of himself these last few days.
Temecula, Calif.-based psychologist Jerry Yang, 39, sat in eighth place with 8.5 million chips. And Russia had its representation in the 2007 World Series of Poker with Alex Kravchenko.
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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com
Originally published July 16, 2007 10:28 am ET
