WSOP Event #35

World Series of Poker Event #35, Seven Card Stud, 18-20 June 2008

Entrants: 381
Buy in: $1,500
Prize pool: $520,065

Final results:

1. Michael Rocco, $135,753

2. Al Barbieri, $83,210

3. Levon Torosyan, $50,186

4. Max Troy, $37,184

5. Giacomo Dagostino, $28,083

6. Danny Kalpakis, $21,842

7. Andre Boyer, $16,642

8. Jeffrey Siegal, $14,041

9. Charles Moore, $11,441

The 2008 $1,500 buy-in Seven-Card Stud champion is Mike Rocco, from Las Vegas, NV. He is a 48-year-old professional poker player, who by his own admission has been going through some rough times lately. Rocco was born in Cleveland, OH.

The $1,500 buy-in Seven-Card Stud championship attracted 381 entries, creating a prize pool totaling $520,065. The top 40 finishers (final five tables) collected prize money.

Incredibly, Rocco won his way into this event by winning a $215 single-table satellite. Rocco collected $135,753 for first place, and earned his first WSOP gold bracelet.

Rocco has been playing professionally since 1997. He mostly concentrates on middle limit cash games in the Los Angeles area. Rocco prefers Seven-Card Stud to Hold’em and for that reason tends to play more in California, where there is more Seven-Card Stud action.

Rocco first came to Las Vegas in the early 1980s. He began working as a blackjack dealer at the Dunes Casino and Hotel (the site where the Bellagio now stands).

Rocco had tears in his eyes in a post-tournament interview when he was asked about his 5-year-old son, Oliver. “He means everything to me,” Rocco said. “This (gold bracelet) is for him.”

“I can’t say enough about my friends,” Rocco said as he pointed to fellow poker pros Jeffrey Lisandro and Cycndy Violette who watched the entire final table match. “I got more phone calls from my friends in the last two days than the last two months – and I don’t even owe them money!”

At age 79, Jack D’Agostino became the oldest player to make it to a WSOP final table in an open event since Pete Kaufman (age 80) accomplished the feat in 2004. D’Agostino ended up as the fifth-place finisher.

Nikolay Evdakov, from Moscow, Russia cashed again (in Event #34). He is now the only player this year who has cashed seven times – just one off the all-time record mark. Evdakov is positioned to break the record set for “Most WSOP Cashes in a Single Year,” shared by four players — Michael Binger (2007), Chad Brown (2007), Phil Hellmuth, Jr. (2006), and Humberto Brenes (2006), with eight.

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