During the current year the poker community has been singing the praises of Erik Seidel and rightly so because he has been on an amazing run, a run that has seen him win no less than $6,445,168 from live poker tournaments. However, there has been another man who despite winning $3,022,119 during the same time frame seems to have gone relatively unnoticed outside the boundaries of the United Kingdom, Sam Trickett.
Trickett started off 2011 in great form, winning the $100,000 buy-in event at the Aussie Millions (Seidel finished third) and coming second, to Seidel, in the $250,000 Super High Roller event, again at the Aussie Millions. Now Trickett has the chance to win his third seven-figure score as he has made the final table of the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event, a tournament that will award €1,000,000 to the eventual winner.
A total of 579 players entered the tournament but only 18 of them made it through to the official fifth day of play. These players returned to their seats knowing that they were only nine eliminations away from making the televised final table, which will take place on November 12. At the start of the day Trickett found himself 13th in chips with a 512,000 stack but after doubling up with aces versus kings he never looked back and by the time Emile Petit had busted out in tenth spot, Trickett was sat behind 2,605,000 chips, enough to make him the overall chip leader.
Although Trickett will start the Partouche Poker Tour Main Evrnt final table as chip leader the next four players also have more than 2,000,000 chips each and even the short stack, Alexander Dovzhenko has 944,000 and is one double up away from the magical 2,000,000 chip mark. This unique even spreading of the chips should make for a very interesting final table in November.
When the nine final table members return to the Palm Beach Casino, Cannes, France, they will do so knowing they will walk away with no less than €100,000 for the troubles but not one of them will be happy with that amount as there is €1,000,000 awaiting the eventual winner. Can Trickett take down yet another tournament career winnings past $6,000,000? We will have to wait until November to find out.
Final table chip counts
1st: Sam trickett: 2,605,000
2nd: Alexandre Coussy: 2,473,000
3rd: Salman Behbehani: 2,446,000
4th: Mads Wissing: 2,144,000
5th: Mustapha Kanit: 2,047,000
6th: Roger Hairabedian: 1,890,000
7th: Oleksii Kovalchuk: 1,626,000
8th: Ilan Boujenah: 1,241,000
9th: Alexander Dovzhenko: 944,000
