It was a record-breaking night at the Gold Strike Casino World Poker Open, and it ended with a new champion who was not on anyone’s top six players list.
After 121 hands and more than four hours of play, Tennessean Bryan Sumner was crowned the 2007 Gold Strike World Poker Open champion. For his first-ever tournament win, Sumner took home $913,986, a diamond-encrusted championship bracelet valued at $5,000, and a much sought-after $25,000 seat in the WPT World Championship set for April at Gold Strike’s sister property, Bellagio, in Las Vegas.
At the onset of Final Table action, there were six players: Young Cho, who was playing in his first $10K buy-in seat, started the evening with the highest chip count (2,571,000). Cho was followed by Daniel Negreanu (1,296,000), who had earlier in the tournament become WPT’s all-time money leader and was certainly a tournament favorite. Behind Negreanu, was Kido Pham (731,000), followed by Sumner (596,000), who makes his living playing poker online and earned his first-ever seat at the big table after winning a one-table $1,000 satellite. Pulling up the final two seats were Gary Krainer (514,000), J.C. Tran (181,000).
Sumner took out Negreanu in three hands of heads-up action. Negreanu took home a half-million dollars for his second-place finish.
