Vegas pro and cash game regular Joe Commisso wins short-handed NLHE Event and $911,855 for first place
World Series of Poker Event #46, Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em, 26-28 June 2008
Entrants: 805
Buy in: $5,000
Prize pool: $3,783,500
Final results:
1. Joe Commisso, $911,855
2. Richard Lyndaker, $570,551
3. Edward Ochana, $368,891
4. Sam Trickett, $245,927
5. Tom Lutz, $174,041
6. Davidi Kitai, $120,693
The $5,000 buy-in Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em championship (Event #46) attracted 805 entries, creating a prize pool totaling $3,783,500. The top 78 finishers collected prize money.
The prize pool is the largest in WSOP history for this event.
The 2008 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em champion is Joe Commisso, from Las Vegas, NV. He is a 28-year-old poker pro. Prior to playing poker for a living, Commisso was an online day trader (stocks).
Commisso won $911,830 for first place. This was his first WSOP gold bracelet victory. This was his first time ever to cash at the WSOP.
This was only the fifth live tournament Commisso had ever played. He cashed previously at only one major tournament – a WSOP Circuit event held in Atlantic City back in 2005, which paid $3,048.
Commisso, a cash game player, does not like playing in poker tournaments. He even went so far as to say he plans to enter very few tournaments in the future, despite his big victory.
Commisso owns a pug (dog) named “Miles.” He named the dog after jazz great Miles Davis. Commisso stated that he slept only a few hours in the off-time between Days Two and Three. “I got home at 6 am and slept only a few hours,” he said. “Then, Miles woke me up.”
The second-place finisher was Rich Lyndaker, from Chaumont, NY.
The heads-up match between Commisso and Lyndaker was epic in both length and drama. The two finalists played over 200 hands together heads up. By contrast, it took only about 70 hands to eliminate the first four players from the finale.
The heads-up match was quite memorable as Lyndaker managed to double-up an astounding 12 consecutive times against Commisso. On 10 of those 12 hands, the worst hand (at the start) ended up scooping the pot. On the 13th confrontation, with Commisso holding onto a precarious 2 to 1 advantage, he managed to finally bust his stubborn adversary.
The fourth-place finisher was Sam Trickett, from Nottingham, England. Prior to playing poker, Trickett played professional soccer in England, before he suffered a knee injury and was forced to quit the game.
Davidi Kitai, who won the Pot-Limit Omaha championship (Event #38) just days earlier, made it to his second final table. This time, he finished in sixth place.
