Phil Ivey and Jeff Shulman at the final table

Image via Wikipedia

Battling through a field of 6,494 over the course of 8 playing days, Phil Ivey has made it to the final table of the World Series of Poker main event.  If he wasn’t already, this now makes him the undisputed greatest player who’s ever played a card game.  The baller-ist of ballers.  I wonder what good he could have done if he were using his statistics skills as CEO of a bank these past ten years, or maybe his people reading skills as a diplomat.

Ivey will start the final Nov. 7 with the second shortest stack among the players left in the tournament.

The nine players remaining were each millionaire winners from a crop of 6,494 entrants. Each will be paid $1.26 million on Thursday, ninth-place money.

Associated press

I don’t really care about poker tournaments in general, but this is something that I can’t help getting nerded up over, and actually look forward to watching when ESPN finally airs it in November.

Also making it to the “November 9″ is Jeff Shulman, editor of Card Player magazine, and victim of two of the most brutal cold decks in all of poker vs Chris Fergisun in 2000.  Shulman, currently 4th in chips, has vowed to throw the championship bracelet in the trash should he win.  This is in protest of the WSOP shutting out all poker magazines besides Bluff.  The same policy that was a-ok with him in 2006 when Card Player was the sole magazine covering the event.  Word on 2+2 is that Schulman is an incompetent scumbag…but I don’t know enough to say yay or nay on that one.