WSOP Event #19

World Series of Poker Event #19, Pot Limit Omaha, 10-12 June 2008

Entrants: 759
Buy in: $1,500
Prize pool: $1,036,035

Final results:

1. Vanessa Selbst, $227,933

2. Jamison Pickering, $145,459

3. Stanley “StanDman” Statkiewicz Jr, $88,063

4. Thomas Schultz, $72,004

5. Eugene Todd, $59,054

6. Craig Natte, $46,622

7. Mel Randolph, $36,261

8. Jamie Robbins, $28,491

9. Kenneth Lairson, $20,721

The 2008 $1,500 buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha champion is Vanessa Selbst, a 23-year-old law student and poker professional from Brooklyn, NY. Selbst became the first woman to win a WSOP open event since Katja Thater last year in the 2007 Razz championship. Selbst collected $227,933 for first place. She also earned her first WSOP gold bracelet.

Selbst is the producer of a popular poker website called Deuces Cracked: www.deucescracked.com. The website serves as an instruction course for poker players. She is also a poker teacher/coach and commands fees of up to $350 per hour.

The 90-minute heads-up match between champion Selbst and the runner-up, Jamie Pickering was as rowdy as any poker duel in recent memory. A crowd of hundreds of spectators ringed the final table area and cheered on both players in a see-saw match. Incredibly, Pickering often raised the pot blind (without looking at his hole cards). He sometimes played hands to the river without peaking to see his hand.

Selbst and her good-natured personality was the perfect foil for Pickering’s unconventional antics and the two finalists developed a witty dialogue of jokes between them which made this finale unquestionably the most entertaining sideshow of the 2008 WSOP.

The second-place finisher was Jamie Pickering, from Surfer’s Paradise, (Queensland) Australia. During play, the 44-year-old nightclub owner mixed with the crowd and gave out “free drink” tickets to poker fans scattered throughout the audience. Of course, Pickering’s club is some 16,000 miles from Rio in Las Vegas, so those unsuspecting souls holding the tickets are likely to have difficulty redeeming them for drinks.

Notable in-the-money finishers included former WSOP gold bracelet champions — 1997 PLO winner Chris Bjorin (12th), 2006 NLHE winner Max Pescatori (26th), 1993 Lowball winner and 2004 PLO winner Chau Giang (34th), 1997 PLO winner David “Devil Fish” Ulliott (60th), and 2004 LHE Shootout winner Kathy Liebert (72nd).

The=is $1,500 buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha championship attracted 759 entrants. This created a prize pool totaling $1,036,035. The top 72 finishers collected prize money.

All WSOP images are supplied by “IMPDI for the 2008 WSOP”