Nick Schulman is the latest World Poker Tour champion after winning the World Poker Finals at Foxwoods Casino last week. At an age of 21, Nick Shulman is the youngest player ever to win a World Poker Tour event. Schulman won the $2.1 million dollar first prize in little more than three and a half hour of play at the final table.
The World Poker Finals is hosted by Foxwoods Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut. Foxwoods is the largest casino in the world, and it should not come as a surprise that this year's World Poker Finals broke a few records. For starters it had a record of 783 players competing in the event, but even more impressive was the $8 million total prize pool, the largest prize pool ever in the history of the World Poker Tour.
The final table of the Foxwoods World Poker Finals looked like this:
- Lyle Berman, $659,000
- Nick Schulman, $3,502,000
- Tony Licastro, $1,412,000
- Lenny Cortellino, $773,000
- Allen Cunningham, $795,000
- Bill Gazes, $693,000
Best known at the final table were Allen Cunningham, the 2005 World Series of Poker Player of the Year, and Lyle Berman, a member of the Poker Hall of Fame.
After only three and a half hours of play, making this one of the shortest WPT final tables, two players remained: the chip-leader Nick Schulman, who plays mostly online, and runner-up Tony Licastro, a tournament specialist.
On the final hand both men went all-in at the Turn with As-Ks-8d-2s on the board. Tony Licastro held 8h-2d for Two Pair, but Shulman had the best of it with a spades Flush (9s-6s). The river card, a 5s, didn't help Tony, and Nick Schulman had won the World Poker Finals, making him the youngest WPT champ at 21, barely old enough to gamble legally.
The World Poker Tour is currently in it's fourth season. Total prize money awarded this season is expected to grow over $100 million dollar, more than twice the prize money awarded in the first three seasons combined. The next World Poker Tour event is the Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio in Las Vegas (December 13 - 16).