The $5,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament was one that drew a total of 731 players despite the heightened price to enter, and the prize pool was grand because of it - $3,435,700 to be exact.
Competitors played their hearts out in this 21st event of the 2008 WSOP, and 121 moved on to the second day, but only nine made it to Day 3 when the final table was ready to go.
Only one would walk away with the most coveted property in poker – the World Series of Poker gold bracelet. Yet with many names at the final table unrecognizable to most poker fans, it wasn’t particularly well-attended in the Amazon Room at the Rio. But the stakes were high, and in the end, all that mattered was the poker and the players competing for the money, the title, and the gold.
Those players and corresponding chip counts were as follows:
Scott Seiver
2,512,000
Rajesh Vohra
1,040,000
Jacobo Fernandez
848,000
Dave Seidman
653,000
Adam Geyer
645,000
Ben Sprengers
441,000
Chuck Sklar
439,000
Scott Freeman
423,000
Anders Henriksson
311,000
At first, it seemed that the action would be fast and furious. On the second hand of the day, Scott Freeman raised the pot, Scott Seiver reraised, Freeman pushed all-in with 
, and Seiver called with 
. The board came 
, and Seiver’s two pair took it. Scott Freeman was eliminated ever so quickly in 9th place with $69,714 for his troubles.
Over twenty hands went by without much action outside of raising and folding, but Dave Seidman put a stop to that. He doubled through chip leader Seiver to finally propel him to over 1 million in chips. Two hands later, when Adam Geyer moved all-in, Seidman did the same and had the shorter stack covered. Geyer showed a 
, but Seidman had it. The board didn’t help Geyer, and Adam was sent home in 8th place with the $94,481 prize.
Action was speeding up again. This time it began with Anders Henriksson raising, and Ben Sprengers and Chuck Sklar calling. When the flop came 
, Sklar led out with a bet, Henriksson moved all-in for his last 285K, and Sprengers came over the top all-in for 460K. Sklar folded. In a bit of d