Congratulations to Tony Veckey, 2009 WSOP Event 54 Champion

Poker News - July 2, 2009 - Written by Bruce

Event 54 at 2009 World Series of Poker was a $1,500 buy in No-Limit Hold'em Event. The 3 day event drew 2,818 entrants with the top 297 finishers placing in the money. The players were all vying for a huge first place prize of $673,276. Some of the biggest names in the poker world were in this event such as Phil Helmuth, Roland De Wolf, Gavin Smith, and Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi to name a few. After the first day of play this large field was widdled down to 384 players all returning for day 2 action with less than 100 players to go before the money payouts. Jon Christensen was the chip leader after Day 1 play holding 159,800 chips. Also holding large stacks going into Day 2 were poker professionals Theo Tran, Hevad Khan, and Carlos Mortensen.

As Day 2 action got under way every hand became critical as the money bubble was approaching. With many players tightening up near the money, others picked up the aggression and used this as an opportunity to accumulate chips. After a few hours of play the players had reached the payouts and guaranteed themselves at least $2,769 for their efforts. This gave poker pro Men "The Master" Nguyen his 65th career WSOP cash, which is 2nd all time 8 short of Phil Helmuth. Day 1 chip leader Jon Christensen continued his hot streak soaring to over 400,000 chips as the players approached their first break of day. When play resumed eliminations were occurring quite rapidly with the likes of Hevad Khan, Men "The Master" Win, and Amit Makhija all quick to exit. The action was quite fast for the rest of Day 2 and play was stopped with 28 players remaining. The chip leader was Sergey Konkin with a massive 1,480,000 in chips. The most recognizable player remaining was online poker phenom Vivek Rajkumar.

With only 19 players to go until the final table was reached Day 3 began with a great deal on the line from hand 1. With many players short on chips however the eliminations were occurring quite rapidly. Day 1 chip leader Jon Christensen had a great tournament but was knocked out in 19th place for a payout of $19,848. We were down to 2 tables remaining now and everyone was guaranteed at least $28,310. With not many chips to work with Vivek Rajkumar's J10 suited ran into the QQ of Christopher Demaci eliminating him in 15th place for $40,350. When the field was down to 10 they all moved to 1 table until the last elimination before the official final table was set. The 10th place finisher ended up being Mike Ratcliff when his KK was unable to hold against the QQ of Jason Wheeler. Ratcliff earned $57,506 as a consolation for being the final table bubble boy. The final table started out slowly as everyone was playing rather tight. After the first elimination occurred the play started to pick up and we started losing players. Jason Wheeler made the biggest move of the final table and seemed to be picking up the most pots. With 6 players remaining all of them were guaranteed to take home a healthy $117,358. Ultimately Jason Wheeler and Tony Veckey outlasted the competition and made it to heads up play. The heads up battle was a hard fought one, but ultimately Jason Wheeler was eliminated in 2nd place earning $418,122 for his great performance. Veckey played a smart aggressive game which netted him $673,276 and a WSOP championship bracelet. Congratulations to Tony Vecky for  winning Event 54 of the 2009 World Series of Poker.