Champion Chip

Online poker site bwin just completed one of it's most popular and biggest tournaments no limit holdem tournaments. The ChampionChip commenced with over 1400 players enrolled to play poker online. Each had visions of winning the biggest chunk of the guaranteed $500,000 prize pool, with first place earning $112,500.

Bwin's coverage revealed this final table set up.

Seat Position/Player Name (Chip Count)

Seat 1: I_Play_Lotto ($301,428 in chips)
Seat 2: Big Al ($246,124 in chips)
Seat 3: floydiano ($134,576 in chips)
Seat 4: baddyrock ($1,259,586 in chips)
Seat 5: basturk ($294,764 in chips)
Seat 6: deevke ($221,362 in chips)
Seat 7: Indice68 ($810,484 in chips)
Seat 8: klimassvd ($210,116 in chips)
Seat 9: EnTapie ($710,054 in chips)
Seat 10: gnugni1 ($92,506 in chips)

Clearly gnugni1 and floydiano had the most work to do. Baddyrock and EnTapie had a little more room to breathe than the rest of the field with each having more than double the chips of their opponents. By virture of his seat floydiano probably wasn't enjoying rubbing virtual elbows with baddyrock.

As often is the case the two shortest stacks weren't the first two players out. Basturk took that honor and the 5.5k that went with it. Then the gunugi1 and floydiano fell going out 9th (7k) and 8th (8.5k) respectively. Big Al and klimassvd took home 10k and 15k. So far, the final table played out to form as each player who started in the bottom five finished there with the exception of deevke who leptfrogged basturk and Big Al into the final five.

At 5 handed, the ChampionChip online poker battle was just starting to heat up. The chips had moved around a little bit. Indice68 at 1.7 million was the chip leader. Baddyrock close behind with 1.2 million, followed by EnTapie (606k), deevke ($427k) and I_Play_Lotto hanging around with just 242k.

The ascension of deevke was short-lived as he exited in 5th winning 20k. Baddyrock was the beneficiary when he won deevke's stack in a coin toss with pocket 9s vs. two overcards.

Later baddyrock got his money in better, with pocket 9s vs. EnTapie's pocket 7s. A seven on the flop meant that baddyrock started as big favorite but ended as the next player going to the rail. The 30k for 4th place wasn't too bad of a consolation prize.

I_Play_Lotto's luck ran out, or maybe the fingernails he was hanging onto gave way. He got his chips in with a small pair... Kings preflop. EnTapie ran hot at the end and his QsTs caught a runner-runner flush. I_Play_Lotto who plays poker online won 40k for third.

EnTapie had Idice68 dwarfed in chips with a 5 to 1 advantage. After four hearts faced each other A6 for EnTapie and 49 for Indice68, the match was settled with the superior hand taking it. EnTapie envisioned a juicy payday and as it got closer and closer it felt more and more real. At the end it was, Entapie took home another $112,500. Indice68 got 62k for second.