9 players return to Las Vegas for last run at $8.55M, World Series of Poker title

9 players return to World Series of Poker

LAS VEGAS — Nine cardplayers returned to the World Series of Poker on Saturday with their sights set on winning a gold bracelet and $8.55 million in the world’s most prestigious gambling event.

The players returning to Las Vegas after a 115-day break had already turned a $10,000 buy-in into at least $1.26 million, and each came to the felt hoping for even greater returns.

“This will clearly be a final table for the history books,” series Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack said.

After Tournament Director Jack Effel introduced the players and poker icon Doyle Brunson delivered the game’s famous order — “Shuffle up and deal!” — the dealer mixed the 52 cards in his hands and play began.

Tournament officials regularly call the no-limit Texas Hold ‘em tournament poker’s biggest stage, and they transformed a theater at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino — normally used by magicians Penn and Teller — to give nearly 1,500 fans a fitting venue to watch its finale.

Before the start, dealers took pictures of themselves at the table with the crowd filtering in.

The players opened plastic bags with their chips inside and stacked the chips on the table. The chips were bagged in July, immediately after the tournament whittled from a starting field of 6,494 players to its final table. Players began the tournament with 30,000 in chips, but those starting Saturday held at least 6.8 million each to start.

Among the returning players were amateur Darvin Moon, a 46-year-old self-employed logger from Oakland, Md., with about 30 percent of the chips in play.

He and the others would have to lose all their chips to be eliminated, or win them all to take the tournament.

Moon’s opponents included six players who make a living playing poker, including one of the game’s most recognizable players, 32-year-old Phil Ivey.

Ivey, who many argue is best all-around poker player alive today, began the day seventh in chips with 5 percent of the chips in play.

The other professionals were 30-year-old Eric Buchman from Hewlett, N.Y., 21-year-old Joe Cada from Shelby Township, Mich., 52-year-old Kevin Schaffel of Coral Springs, Fla., 25-year-old Antoine Saout of Saint Martin Des Champs, France, and 26-year-old James Akenhead of London.

Jeff Shulman, a 34-year-old from Las Vegas who finished seventh at the main event in 2000, is the president of Card Player Media; 47-year-old Steven Begleiter of Chappaqua, N.Y., is a former Bear Stearns Cos. executive who is now a partner in a private equity firm.