WSOP Champions

The 2005 World Series of Poker saw record braking participation and incredibly large total prize payouts of $106 million for the live tournament. A total of 45 events were hosted with as large as 32,341 players who tried their luck aspiring to be the probable winners.

Day one that started with 1,885 players and finally ended up with 650 competitors that moved on to Day two of WSOP. Of the players who survived day one included stalwarts like Greg Raymer, Reza Payvar, and Layne Flack among others.

With the elimination process continuing upto the seventh day, only a minuscule lucky nine players could survive the filtering out process and finally the Australian, Joseph Hachem, claimed the championship title bagging  $7.5 million. When Hachem was interviewed all that he said was ‘A million would have changed my life, let alone $7.5 million’. ‘It changes everything’ he mused, having vanquished Steve Dannenmann in the big clash.

In a similar sensational manner Greg "Fossilman" Raymer had bagged the 2004 WSOP championship, walking away with a whopping $5 million in cash prize, in addition to the gold bracelet. Nearly 50% of the players who constituted the final table at the 2004 World Series of Poker comprised of those who had qualified for the tournament via the internet.

In 2003,Chris Moneymaker who has been frequenting online poker tables for the last three years saw his great chance. He gambled for a seat in the 2003 WSOP in an online tournament for a mere $39.00. Proving his talent in several elimination rounds, finally he made to Las Vegas and won the title, defeating Sam Farha.

In 2002 Robert Varkonyi had won the WSOP. Julian "The Kid" Gardner, who was the runner–up was nonetheless considerably rich with cash prize of $2,000,000.

Onetime, there’s been changes in the manner and the means via which poker is player across the game. The list of fans for this enchanting game is ever expanding. WSOP obviously features at the heart of all poker events with players pulling up all the grit and gray-cells for the challenge.