J.C. Tran Wins World Poker Challenge

Since October of last year, he’s cashed eight times for $2.6 million.
He won almost $700,000 of that just last night by winning the
$5,000 World Poker Tour’s World Poker Challenge held at the
Grand Sierra Resort in Reno.

Tran outlasted 474 players to win the WPT event. This was the
first major tournament he played since finishing second in the
WPT L.A. Poker Classic, which attracted so many players (791),
that second was worth $1.117 million. He also received a $25,000
entry into the WPT championship for his win in Reno.

He leads the Card Player Magazine Player of the Year race by
656 points with 3,504. Click the "LINK" to see the complete standings.
The final table of the World Poker Challenge was a tough one,
with Tran, Mark Seif, Juan Carlos Alvarado, David Pham, and John
Hom. All these players have at least $200,000 in tournaments
poker winnings, but Tran has reached the poker stratosphere
with more than $4 million in lifetime winnings himself.

Alvarado finished second, winning $366,798. He started the
day second in chips with $1.1 million. Pham started the day
with the chip lead, but it was only good for a third-place finish,
worth $182,260. It was his seventh cash of the year. He now
sits in the third spot on the Card Player Magazine Player of
the Year race. Seif finished fourth and earned $159,478. It was
his second cash of 2007, and the first one worth more than $20,000.

Hom was the second player to be knocked out of the final table,
and for his fifth-place finish he won $136,695. He started the
table as the short stack with $119,000 chips.
And Danny Wong was the first player to leave the final table at
the World Poker Challenge, winning $113,913. It was Wong’s
fourth cash of the year.

Link

World Series of Poker preps for '07 tournament
To raise money for research

The World Series of Poker is preparing for a record
number of entrants even though the government is
cracking down on online gambling sites that have
boosted the tournament's popularity.

Organizers said Wednesday they are planning for
10,000 players, a 14 per cent increase over last year's
record of 8,773 players. Half of the 2006 participants
were estimated to have won their seats in online
qualifier events.

"It is not either a target, a goal or a prediction,"
tournament commissioner Jeffrey Pollack said during
a conference call with reporters. "But again, you've
got to plan for something. We're planning for a top
level of 10,000, but if there are more, we will figure
it out."

The tournament plans to build a structure beside the
host Rio casino-hotel in Las Vegas and increase the
number of tables to 258, Pollack said. That would be
enough to allow more than 3,000 players to play the
first three days of the main event.

A higher number of entrants would mean the grand
prize for the world's richest poker game would exceed
last year's US$12 million.

The tournament also said it was distancing itself from
online poker sites that accept bets from U.S. players,
in line with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement
Act. The measure was signed by U.S. President George
W. Bush as part of a port security bill in October.

Groups associated with dot-com poker sites that take
U.S. wagers will no longer be allowed to set up VIP
booths and displays, Pollack said.

The tournament, owned by Harrah's Entertainment Inc.,
also is warning sites that improperly use trademarked
material, such as the tournament name, to stop.