The 5 day
Mandalay Bay Poker Championship went off to a great start with 228 entries paying $10,000 + $300 to buy into the tournament. The players were a motley mix of poker pros, internet players and local hopefuls who collectively contributed to the total pool prize of $2,211,600. Held from May 29, 2007 – June 2, 2007, the
Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada witnessed 27 payouts over the course of the championship.
At the final table, Canadian poker professional, Shawn Buchanan pits his wits and skill against more seasoned players. His chip count of 853,000 at the start of the final game was no where close to the chip leader, Jared Hamby, who started with 1,764,000 chips. The rest of the players had the following chip count:
- Thayer Rasmussen – 273,000
- David Levi – 334,000
- David Haddad – 1,180,000
- Danny Wong – 190,000
The final six players were seated at the final table in the following arrangement:
- Rasmussen – Seat 1
- Levi – Seat 2
- Hamby – Seat 3
- Haddad – Seat 4
- Wong – Seat 5
- Buchanan – Seat 6
Blinds were 8k – 16k with 2k antes at beginning of final day. Wong was the first to exit with $76,515 followed by Haddad with $98,375. Rasmussen was in fourth place with $131,170 and Levi in third with $229,540. That left Buchanan and Hamby at heads up play when blinds were 20k – 40k with 5k antes. The chip count at that time was:
- Buchanan – 1.8 million
- Hamby – 2.8 million
Despite having a strong chip lead, Hamby could not win the championship and conceded defeat to Buchanan’s winning hand of 3 diamonds 3 hearts to his K hearts 8 hearts. With 4 spades on the turn and A spades on the river, Buchanan emerged as the new WPT title holder, bagging the first prize of $768,775 in cash. Hamby netted $459,080 as runner-up.
Shawn Buchanan hails from Abbotsford in British Columbia, Canada. Another young professional poker player in his twenties, Buchanan was a former house framer and landscaper. He began playing poker with friends several years ago and is the protégé of Greg Mueller. Buchanan was so used to playing online poker he found the transition to playing live poker tournaments more difficult as he was not able to read people. He plays online poker at PokerStars under the name “buck21” and as of 2008, his total live tournament winnings exceed $1.3 million.
-- Reinu C.
