WSOP Main Event Final Table Set, With Lone Remaining Amateur Leading Eight Pros

With the 10,103rd elimination of the 2024 World Series of Poker Main Event at about 11:20 p.m. Las Vegas time on Sunday, the final table of the annual world championship of poker was set. The nine remaining players, each guaranteed at least $1 million, will compete for the $10 million top prize and a gold bracelet when the action resumes Tuesday after a day off.

Of the final nine, eight are professional poker players. The man with far and away the most chips, Jordan Griff, is an amateur. According to his LinkedIn profile, Griff, 30, is a supply chain manager for Meta based out of Scottsdale, Arizona — who is perhaps a couple of days away from being able to tell Mark Zuckerberg to take his job and shove it.

On the very first hand of play Sunday, Griff, the second-shortest stack to start the day, put his tournament life at stake with pocket queens against a flopped set of threes, seemed headed for an 18th-place exit, and hit a queen on the river to stay alive.

In case anyone had forgotten, it takes a lot of skill and a lot of luck to run deep in the Main Event.

The final nine

In the largest Main Event ever, the final table seat assignments and chip counts are as follows:

• Seat 1: Boris Angelov, 52,900,000 chips
• Seat 2: Malo Latinois, 25,500,000 chips
• Seat 3: Brian Kim, 94,600,000 chips
• Seat 4: Niklas Astedt, 94,200,000 chips
• Seat 5: Joe Serock, 83,600,000 chips
• Seat 6: Jordan Griff, 143,700,000 chips
• Seat 7: Jonathan Tamayo, 26,700,000 chips
• Seat 8: Andres Gonzalez, 18,300,000 chips
• Seat 9: Jason Sagle, 67,300,000 chips

All but Griff are accomplished pros — and even Griff had $47,000 in live tournament cashes to his credit prior to this — but perhaps the most notable are Sweden’s Niklas Astedt, widely regarded as one of the greatest online poker players of all-time; Australia-based Californian Brian Kim, who boasts $7.3 million in career tournament earnings and finished 23rd in the Main Event two years ago; and veteran pro Joe Serock, who has won more than $4.5 million in his tournament career.

Kim and Serock each have one WSOP bracelet win to their credit.

Entering the day Sunday, the big story was four-time bracelet winner Kristen Foxen’s run, as she attempted to become the first woman since Barbara Enright in 1995 to reach the final table. She was the chip leader with 16 players remaining, but spiraled downward from there until Serock eliminated her in 13th place, good for a $600,000 payday.

New Hall of Famer revealed

Sunday’s other big poker news was the announcement of this year’s Poker Hall of Fame inductee: Patrik Antonius.

A former model from Helsinki, Finland, the 43-year-old Antonius has achieved massive success in both cash games and tournaments and both online and live. He has never won a WSOP bracelet, but he does have nearly $23 million in career live tournament earnings.

He’s probably best known for playing in the biggest online cash games in the prime of Full Tilt Poker, tangling regularly with the likes of Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, and Viktor Blom.

“It was little bit unexpected for me, at this young age especially,” Antonius said of his induction in his slightly broken English on Sunday at Paris Las Vegas to the assembled poker crowd. “I’ve been always big fan of the game, I’ve been a student of the game. … I think I’m going to stick around for a long time, it’s my plan is to keep playing the highest tournaments and cash games.”

He added that one of the keys to his success is “that I’ve always had so much passion and love for the game.”