Nine dreams remain

By Gary Wise

ESPN.com (Archive)

It seems like long ago that 6,494 dreams started the process of sorting the order in which they'd be shattered back in the early days of July. Day after day, hopeful souls marched their way into the Rio All-Suite Hotel's Amazon Room with their eyes on the prize: $8,546,435, fame, the bracelet and the envy and admiration of the poker world's nine-figure population. Most marched back out, tails tucked, telling one sad story after another upon their respective decimations.

Nine players survived the two weeks of main event play in July and now that ESPN's broadcasts have caught up to the action, we're all up to date on who they are, how they're seated and where they rank heading into the final table. We can also finally look at the storylines that will bind and define them and how those storylines might affect their respective outcomes when play resumes on November 7th.

Andrew Feldman explained here how the schedule will work itself out, but he didn't get into two contrasting features of the final table that, when weighed, will determine how things play out. First, with the small stack at $6.8 million and the big blind just $240,000, there's plenty of play left at this table.

Second, have a look at the payouts:

1: $8,546,435
2: $5,182,601
3: $3,479,485
4: $2,502,787
5: $1,953,295
6: $1,587,133
7: $1,404,002
8: $1,300,228
9: $1,263,602

The important thing to note here is how little the payouts rise through the first few eliminations. Sure, $36,000 is a lot of bread to mere mortals, but when you're assured a seven-figure payout, that kind of dough is ignorable, which means we won't be seeing a lot of Kelly Kim-style stalling one's way up the final standings. … More