Brian Sumner - 2007 WPO Champ

The 2007 GoldStrike World Poker Open WPT Championship event attracted 294 players for a total prize pool of $2,856,200. After four days of play, the six remaining players were evenly split between well-known poker pros and relative unknowns. Daniel Negreanu, JC Tran, and Thang 'Kido' Pham joined Young Cho, Gary Kainer, and Brian Sumner on the WPT set to vie for the $913,986 first prize.

Although JC Tran was the short-stack with fewer than 20 big blinds at the start, it was more than four hours before he was finally eliminated in 6th place. From that point, things moved along fairly quickly until Daniel Negreanu found himself heads-up with unknown Brian Sumner, who held almost three times as many chips as Daniel. Four hands later it was over and Daniel had to settle for second place, a mere $502,691. Brian walked away with the top prize and the $25,000 seat to the WPT Championship.

Daniel has always done well in Tunica and plans to return this year. In 2005, he finished 3rd in the WPO Main Event; in 2006, he won the WSOP Circuit Event; and of course his 2nd place finish in the WPO last year.

The 2008 Main Event begins on Sunday the 20th at noon CST and runs for 5 days. This year, there will be two starting flights, so Sunday will be day 1A and Monday will be day 1B, with the survivors returning for day 2 on Tuesday, January 22nd. The final table and filming for the WPT Season 6 which will air on the Game Show Network (GSN) will take place on Thursday, January 24th.

Kaelaine Minton Reporting

Kaelaine is one of the hardest working reporters on the tournament cicruit, and she can play poker, too!  She won the 2007 World Poker Open Media Tournament at the Goldstrike in Tunica, besting a field of 50 to win the event and the WPO gold bracelet!   Her motto is "will do anything poker-related for money".

Contact Kaelaine