Level: 20
Blinds: 3,000/6,000
Ante: 1,000
2010-11 World Series of Poker Circuit Event - Rincon
Regional Championship
Day: 4
Event Info
Final Results
Event Info
Level Info
2010-11 World Series of Poker Circuit Event - Rincon
Buy-in
$10,000
Prize Pool
$950,600
Entries
98
Level
26
Blinds
12,000 / 24,000
Ante
4,000
"Where Broolyn at! Where Brooklyn at! We gonna do it like this. Anytime you're ready, check it!" - Notorious B.I.G.
This man needs no introduction on the World Series of Poker Circuit tour. Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Pilgrim has three WSOP Circuit gold rings, one World Poker Tour title where he "shocked the world", and nearly $1.7 million in live tournament earnings.
Pilgrim came onto the scene in 2008 with a few small cashes before he won his first gold ring at the WSOP Circuit event held at Caesars Atlantic City. Pilgrim won $83,955 in that performance, which was back in March 2009. In the same month, Pilgrim won the Harrah's Rincon WSOP Circuit Championship Event for $125,775.
Fast forward to 2010 where Pilgrim had his greatest year on the felt ever. He started off the year with a couple of wins at the Southern Poker Championship in Biloxi before heading up to Connecticut and winning an event at the Foxwoods Mega Stack Challenge XV. In March 2010, Pilgrim won his third WSOP Circuit gold ring back in Rincon.
After a fairly successful WSOP that saw him run deep in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em event, final table the $2,500 Limit/No-Limit Hold'em event and cash in the Main Event, Pilgrim kept up his winning ways by capturing the largest-ever World Poker Tour event. In September, Pilgrim won the 2010 Borgata Poker Open that had a field of 1,042 players. He earned himself his largest score ever with $733,802 before ending out the year with over $1.18 million in earnings.
If Pilgrim can win this event, he'll earn his fourth gold ring and tie Mark “Pegasus” Smith and Men “the Master” Nguyen. He enters the final table third in chips with 408,000.
Miller Dao is one of two players coming into the final table under 100,000 in chips. Dao will enter the final table as the the second shortest stack with 99,000, only ahead of Dylan Wilkerson.
From Maricopa, California, Dao is a police officer originally born in Vietnam. He holds over $62,000 in live tournament winnings to his name including one World Series of Poker cash. That came came this past year in a $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em event.
The largest score on Dao's record is a fifth-place finish in a $500 No-Limit Hold'em event at the 2009 Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza III. Dao placed fifth in that event for $18,239. That was his second final table of the series, previously taking seventh in a similar event for $11,503. At this WSOP Circuit stop, Dao took third in a preliminary $555 No-Limit Hold'em ring event that was won by Casino Champion Mstr Lynch.
David Peters enters the final table second in chips with 434,000. That's still over 400,000 chips behind the chip leader Tim West. Peters is 50 years old and an attorney by profession.
Peters is from Rancho Santa Fe, California and holds over $600,000 in live tournament earnings. He has a few World Series of Poker cashes on record and a few tournaments wins. He also final tabled the WSOP Circuit Championship Event in Rincon back in February 2008 where he went on to finish second to $120,156. That's his largest score to day. Peters' largest win came at the 2008 Festa al Lago Classic in Las Vegas. There Peters won a $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em event for $63,295.
His best WSOP finish was in 2008. Peters won $11,385 for coming in 47th place in the $2,000 No-Limit Hold'em event. That same year he had three other WSOP cashes as well.
After Day 1, Ali Eslami led the field in this $10,000 Regional Championship. He's been able to keep himself towards the top of the leader board since and has made it to the final table fourth in chips with 395,000.
Eslami is from Los Angeles, California and regularly plays the highest cash games in the world with some of the best players. That doesn't mean he doesn't know how to play tournaments though and seems to fair pretty well when he does, having earned himself over $370,000 in live tournament earnings.
Eslami has cashed in World Series of Poker events 10 times and made two final tables. His first WSOP final table came in 2007 in the $2,500 H.O.R.S.E. event. He took fifth place in that event for $2,501. In 2008, Eslami found himself at the final table of the $1,500 Limit Hold'em event and eventually went on to finish in seventh place for $41,441. He's cashed in the Main Event only once, back in 2004 for $45,000 after coming in 45th place.
In July 2007, Eslami joined Phil Laak in a competition against Polaris, a poker bot designed by the computer poker research group at the University of Alberta. Both Eslami and Laak played four duplicate matches of 500 hands each for a total of 16 hours. In each match, the same cards were dealt to both pairs of players, human and bot, but with the seating reversed. In the first match, the players and Polaris tied. In the second, Polaris won. In the third and fourth, the players won. Eslami and Laak split the $10,000 prize for defeating Polaris in matches three and four along with $2,500 for scoring a tie in the first match.
Just recently, Eslami was in Los Angeles for THe Big Event at The Bicycle Casino. In the Main Event there, Eslami took 35th place for $9,000. Just a couple days later, he made the final table of the $10,000 Bounty Shootout at the same event and went on to finish in second place for $56,000.
D.J. Blanchard is a 22-year-old University of Nevada-Las Vegas student who considers himself a professional poker poker. Blanchard is originally from Augusta, Georgia. He now lives in Las Vegas, Nevada where UNLV is located and is just one semester shy of graduating.
Checking in on Blanchard's records, we see that he has nearly $40,000 in live tournament earnings and three World Series of Poker cashes. Last year at the WSOP, Blanchard cashed in two $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em events and one $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em event. His best live finish to date is a second place in an event at the Caesars Palace Classic in 2009 for $13,774.
Making this final table is by far the best performance of Blanchard's young poker career and he still has a lot of room to improve upon that. He'll enter the table right in the middle of the pack, fifth in chips with 271,000.
Tim West comes into the final table as the chip leader in a big way. He holds over 400,000 more chips than his next closest competitor and has over 28% of the chips in play. He is 25 years old and hails from San Francisco, California.
With nearly $1.3 million in career tournament winnings coming from a long list of live cashes, West is a pretty recognizable face in the poker community. On top of that, West holds over $3.6 million in online tournament earnings where he most commonly goes by the name "Tmay420".
In 2009 and 2010, West didn't do too much on the live felt. In fact, he barely broke into six figures for earnings when you combine both of those years, winning $41,084 in 2009 and $61,309 in 2010. His best year live came in 2008 when he earned himself over $320,000. His best single live score came in December 2006 when West took second place in the $5,000 No-Limit Hold'em event at the Fifth Annual Five Diamond World Poker Classic in Las Vegas. That score netted him $181,115.
West's 2011 has been off to an extremely solid start. A month ago in February, West scored a 21st-place finish in the $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em Championship Event at the World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic. He earned $43,800 for his run there, but did a lot better just days before heading here to Rincon.
West scored first place in the Wynn Classic $5,170 Main Event after beating a field of 212 players. The field was packed with big names and West had to conquer a tough final table to earn the title. It was one that included John Kim, Carter King, Eric Froehlich, Max Steinberg, Matt Waxman and Annette Obrestad, who West eventually beat heads up for the win. Not only did West win the event, but he pocketed his largest live cash with a first-place prize of $318,738. That puts his total for 2011 at $362,538, which makes it his best year ever even despite only being three months in.
Here is the final table short stack, Dylan Wilkerson from San Francisco, California. Wilkerson is a 26-year-old poker pro and has a lot of work cut out for him if he's going to go on to win this thing. He has just 89,000 chips entering the final table.
When we looked up Wilkerson's results, we found he has three live cashes for a total of $33,628. That means he's nearly doubled that already with this final table. The largest cash he has on record is a second-place finish in a side event at the 2008 APPT Sydney Big Game Poker Championships for $21,967. That means this finish, which has earned him at least $24,235, is the largest of Wilkerson's live poker career.
Wilkerson graduated from UC-Berkley and will need to be able to think quick on his feet if he wants to find himself climbing the ladder in this one.
Steve Brecher from Reno, Nevada holds over $2 million in live tournament earnings and is a Full Tilt Poker Red Pro. He has a few World Series of Poker cashes to his name, but the bulk of his success has come on the World Poker Tour where he has 14 cashes and one title.
At the Bay 101 Shooting Stars event in March 2009, Brecher bested a field of 391 players to take home the $1,025,500 first-place prize. He had to beat tough tournament professional Kathy Liebert heads up to do it, which is no easy task. That's by far Brecher's largest score, but he's had some other decent results to go along with it.
In 2004, Brecher scored sixth place in the WPT Championship for $232,862. In 2005, Brecher scored third place at the United States Poker Championship in Atlantic City for $218,250. In 2009, Brecher won $99,641 for coming in eighth place at the Foxwoods World Poker Finals WPT event.
Brecher holds a degree from Stanford University and is 65 years old. He is a computer software programmer and marketer who frequents the tournament circuit. He'll enter his first-ever WSOP Circuit final table with 246,000 in chips.
Dana Kellstrom from Stevenson Ranch, California, is a 47-year-old poker player and entrepreneur. He holds over $165,000 in career tournament earnings coming into this event and with this final table here, will add a minimum of $24,235 to that total. On his record are four World Series of Poker cashes. One of those came in 2009 and three in 2010. His best finish money wise came in the 2009 WSOP Main Event where Kellstrom placed 620th for a payday worth $21,365.
Kellstrom's largest score is $38,000 and came from a 61st-place finish in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event. Not bad at all for a $10,000 buy-in event that attracted 1,560 players.
Kellstrom is married and has four children. He'd like to give a shout out to them along with the cigar boys from back home. He's one of the shorter stacks to start the final table, but anything can happen in this game.