How often does a $10,000 investment earn a cool $8.7 million dollars in just a few months? It happened in 2011, to a young man from Germany, Pius Heinz. At the start of the 2011 World Series of Poker, predictions were made. By July 20, only nine remained, leaving the world holding its breath until those nine met again at the Rio in Las Vegas on November 6 to finish the battle. How did the World Series of Poker final table preview predictions hold up?

Final table chip position at the start of the day ranked the players Martin Staszko, Eoghan O’Dea, Matt Giannetti, Phil Collins, Ben Lamb, Badih Bounahra, Pius Heinz, Anton Makiievskyi, and Sam Holden. As of November 4, Vegas odds agreed roughly with the chip leaders, ranking Martin Staszko, Eoghan O’Dea, Ben Lamb, Matt Gianetti, Phil Collins, Anton Makiievskyi, Pius Heinz, Bhadi Bounahra, and Sam Holden in order by odds. Experts weighed in by predicting Ben Lamb as a favorite, along with Phil Collins and Matt Giannetti.

On November 6, the first players to be ousted were, predictably, Sam Holden and Anton Makiievskyi, with short stacks and few plays. Badih Bounahra, too was eliminated on this day as a conservative player short on chips and winning only one showdown. Eoghan O’Dea mixed styles, sometimes being the aggressor with pre-flop raises, and sometimes allowing the other players to do the betting. Neither style worked for him today, as he won no pots, and went home in sixth place.

Martin Staszko played somewhat conservatively until the number of players dwindled. Ben Lamb, too, waited until the play was down to four players before challenging the pot. Pius Heinz, being short-stacked. aggressive, and lucky, won pots to end the day with a very large chip lead over his two remaining opponents, Ben Lamb and Martin Staszko. By the end of the day, the World Series of Poker Final Table Preview predictions appeared deceptively simpler.

November 9, the final day of the main event found the World Series of Poker Final Table Preview to be wildly unpredictable, as Martin Staszko quickly became the chip leader, eliminating Ben Lamb in hand 182 of the final table. Pius Heinz watched his chips whittle away until hand 293, when he started a comback. It was complete. With the ups and downs over the two days, Pius Heinz emerged the mostly unpredicted winner of the 2011 World Series of Poker, walking away with 8.7 million dollars.

The 2011 World Series of Poker even after suffering the April 15th set back has come back strongly and is tasting success. Even after facing a lot of crackdown from the government, online poker has gained a lot of popularity from people all across the world. Many poker rooms surfaced online offering players from USA many incentives and bonuses to sign up. This was especially seen in the Las Vegas when a large number of people gathered to make the most out of their poker skills. As many as 75,000 people participated and played in the 58 WSOP bracelet events making a prize pool of a whopping $187,109,850.

This success of the WSOP shows how popular poker is in this era and how the globalization of poker with the help of Internet has made several people interested in playing poker. Even after this tremendous craze for poker, the United States is yet to make the most out of this booming industry of poker. This is mainly evident from the fact that the US is still hesitant to provide licenses to companies in US so that they can provide real money poker. This is nothing but a forced suppression of personal freedom of the US citizens. Thus, it is time to press for laws such as H.R. 2366 and H.R. 1174. These are nothing but legislation that support online poker.

The success and popularity of poker is evident mostly because out of the 6,800 main event entries began in the first place. This alone garnered $8.71 and with 75,672 entries on Sunday made the WSOP the biggest ever tournament. The main motive of these entries was not only to play poker but it was a call to the government to legalize online poker.

This has been a tremendous turnout from the 2,576 main event entries in 2004. The continued increasing support to legalize online poker in Washington will most probably come to fruition this year. This has also made a lot of casino executives a lot more optimistic than they have been ever before.

Legalizing online poker will definitely ensure more explosive growth in the arena of poker and people will not have to wait for too long to see the main event entries touching 10,000 and the sky will only be the limit for these entries.

Poker tournaments are not just money making machines; they are in fact something more than these. People who love to play poker are also ready to travel miles to take part in the World Series of Poker and are also willing to spend a lot of money. There is no doubt that it is going to be difficult to maintain this record.

This could have already taken place earlier especially if the politicians would have not got stuck in the bad deal of 2006, when the poker world was knocked for a loop by former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s through his successful efforts to nibble the tremendous growth of Internet gambling with laws that prohibited U.S. financial institutions from handling transactions.

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