The venue for the Mirage Poker Showdown was none other than The Mirage in Las Vegas, Nevada. This 5 day tournament was held from May 19, 2007 – May 23, 2007 and attracted 309 entries who bought in for $9,700 + $300 each. They contributed to a total pool prize of $2,907,381. By the end of the championship, there were 27 payouts.

A staggering number of professional poker players sat at the final table. The seating arrangements of the six players were:

• Richard Kirsch in Seat 1
• Jonathan Little in Seat 2
• Cory Carroll in Seat 3
• Phil Ivey in Seat 4
• Darrell Dicken in Seat 5
• Amnon Filippi in Seat 6

The chip count for the players at the final table was:

• Kirsch – 810,000
• Little – 956,000
• Carroll – 1,235,000
• Ivey – 1,395,000
• Dicken – 1,203,000
• Filippi – 571,000

At the start of the final day, blinds were 12k – 24k with 3k antes. As the game progressed, Filippi was eliminated in sixth place with winnings of $100,865. Ivey was in fifth place with cash prize of $129,684. He was followed by Kirsch who earned cash winnings of $172,912. In third place was Dicken who netted $259,369.

Jonathan “Fiery Justice” Little faced Cory Carroll at heads up play when the chip count favoured Carroll who had 3,125,000 chips to Little’s 3,050,000 chips. The two young players had a combined age of 46. Little proved to be the more skilful of the two. His winning hand of A spades 2 spades defeated Carroll’s A hearts 7 diamonds to clinch the championship title. 2 clubs on the turn and Q hearts on the river did not help Carroll’s cause. Little won cash of $1,091,295 while runner-up Carroll went home with $561,359.

Jonathan Little was born on December 22, 1984 in Pensacola, Florida and is now aged 24. He’s a professional poker player, having dropped out of the University of West Florida where he was studying psychology. After earning a bank roll of $35,000 in online poker over a six month period, Little pulled out of college to focus on poker full time.

He formed the “Ship It Holla Ballas” comprising a group of poker players who travel the globe to play in high stakes poker tournaments. He won the WPT Season IV Player of the Year Award and has amassed total live tournament winnings of more than $3.9 million as of 2008.

-- Reinu C.