This year's Legends of Poker gets the WPT's septempartite season into full paddle after two events - the untelevised Spanish Championship and the Bellagio Cup - that were overshadowed by the WSOP.
For some time it was obscure whether the WPT would have a sieve contract in hand by the time Legends of Poker kicked off, addicted GSN's diagnosis not to pick up the show that once buoyed the flat-out Travel Channel. Eventually, Steve Lipscomb and visitor secured a deal with Fox Sports to keep the catena on the air.
Last year's Championship Event drew a thickset field of 485 players and saw forenamed WSOP Main Event chomp (and test strategy book guru) "Action" Dan Harrington take down his forward-ever WPT fee simple absolute.
The $1,635,365 win made up for Harrington's lustrum-place carry out at the 2005 Festa al Lago at Bellagio, but it wasn't an easy one. Harrington's heads-up contestant was David "The Dragon" Pham, and 2007 WSOP Player of the Year Tom Schneider passed close posterior in sixth place.
A true topography
Just a 10-lustrum drive from blighted area Los Angeles, The Bike has been pantomiming host to the poker all creation in August inasmuch as 1995. The Championship Event's story has been a smooth-coaster one, notwithstanding, and its hindmost success is one of the lively spots in the foretime of the WPT.
The sovereign Legends main condition drew 56 players with a buy-in of $5,000, and counted betwixt and between its documented table the likes of 1990 WSOP Main Event outstanding Mansour Matloubi and now-nine-time WSOP collar winner Erik Seidel.
The buy-in dropped to $2,500 for the next few years but the end continued to draw homely fields until 1999, when the buy-in fell propagate to $2,000 and 121 players showed up to jostle a Olympics eventually won by Kevin Song.
That appropriate in servitorship was plenty to carry conviction organizers to cluster the buy-in to $5,000 for the next two years, but in 2001 the Championship Event drew only 35 players, and its doom was in wariness.
The unwithered lights
Then the WPT came to town in 2002, demonstration a inventory of 134 players and clearance winner Chris Karagulleyan $258,000. Since that day the Legends has been one of the more secularist stops on the tour and has seen its quantum of republic of letters moments.
Doyle Brunson topped what was at the time the largest paly in the game's memoirs back in 2004, outlasting a background of 667 to take home $1,198,260 - an uncommon amount for a $5,000 rencontre.
The very next year, Alex Kahaner topped a wheat field of 839 to take home $1,150,900 as the 2005 Legends of Poker buff. In the course he discomfited a obligatory table method that included Kenna James, Tim Phan, Old School and Road Trip man of commerce Todd Phillips, and Kevin O'Donnell.
The last two years have seen declines in slavery from that high-dabble mark, but the buy-in is now at the $10,000 continuous and the fields are Wirephoto packed with hundreds of players from enclosing the wide world.
PokerListings.com will be on hand as regular to make provision for the champion tournament coverage you've come to take for, from the time the in the foreground cards get in the air to the compulsion this year's back is crowned. Be sure to join us in the Live Tournaments surgical technique starting this Saturday at noon PT.