Tournament Notes:
• The winner is Theo Jorgensen. He is a 36-year-old professional poker player from Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Jorgensen has been playing poker seriously for about 15 years.
• Jorgensen has many tournament accomplishments, including the 2004 Seven-Card Stud European championship and two European Poker Tour final tables. Jorgensen also took eighth place at last year's World Series of Poker Main Event in London, which paid £85,070.
• Aside from poker, Jorgensen enjoys watching and betting on football (soccer).
• Jorgensen paid cash to enter this tournament.
• In a recent Poker Nations Cup competition, Jorgensen represented his home nation of Denmark. He was hand picked to play in the tournament finale, but ultimately lost to poker pro Kathy Liebert.
• Jorgensen collected first place prize money totaling £218,626 equivalent to about $402,403 in US dollars.
• Jorgensen's career WSOP earnings now total $618,953. He has cashed four times and has made three final table appearances – all within the past two years.
• Jorgensen's victory means that the six WSOPE tournaments played so far have been won by players from Italy, Germany, Norway, Afghanistan, and Denmark (2).
• Jorgensen is the second Dane to win a gold bracelet at 2008 WSOP Europe. Last week, fellow Dane Jesper Hougaard won the £1,500 buy-in No-Limit Hold'em event.
• Jorgensen becomes the third Danish poker player in history to win a WSOP gold bracelet. The others were Jesper Hougaard and Jan Sorensen – both with two wins each. Peter Eastgate, also from Denmark, is schedule to play as on the "November Nine" finalists at the Main Event championship late this year in Las Vegas.
• When heads-up play began, Jorgensen enjoyed slightly better than a 2 to 1 chip advantage. However, his final adversary Sorel Mizzi staged a dramatic comeback during the 90-minute heads-up battle. At one point, Mizzi had his opponent all-in and drawing to just four outs. Mizzi had turned a straight and Jorgensen was left holding top two pair. The board paid, miraculously recuing Jorgensen from the jaws of defeat. About 20 hands later Jorgensen ultimately won his victory.
• The runner up was Sorel Mizzi, who is widely known as an online poker prodigy. Mizzi has accumulated over $1 million in online poker winnings alone. He also finished in third place at the 2007 Irish Poker Open. Second place paid £132,000.
• Eric Dalby took third place. At age 78, Dalby came close to becoming the second-oldest WSOP gold bracelet winner in history (Johnny Moss was 80 at the time he won his eighth and last title, in 1988). At one point, he had the chip lead when play was three-handed, but ended up settling for the bronze.
• Erik Friberg was eliminated in fourth place. He is best known in the poker world for making the final table in the 2006 WSOP Main Event, when he won $1.9 million for eighth place. Friberg also took third place (good for $345,000) in the Six-Handed Hold'em championship at the 2007 WSOP.
• Two-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Max Pescatori finished in fifth place.
• David Penly, winner of the 2008 Norwegian Pot-Limit Omaha championship, finished sixth in this event.
• 2000 world poker champion Chris "Jesus" Ferguson was eliminated in seventh place. This marked Ferguson's 57th career in-the-money finish, which now ranks third in the all-time WSOP standings. He just moved ahead of Berry Johnston (with 56 cashes). Only Men "the Master" Nguyen (62) and Phil Hellmuth (69) have more career cashes.
• Neil Channing cashed in this event (11th place). This was Channing's ninth in-the-money finish at this year's WSOP, which technically broke the previous record of eight cashes. However, Russian poker player Nikolay Evdakov already has ten WSOP cashes in 2008, which leaves Channing one behind.
• Two-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Chris Bjorin cashed in this event, finishing in 15th place. This marked Bjorin's 44th career WSOP cash, which places him in the top 25 all-time.
• Nikolay Evdakov, from Moscow, Russia played in this event, but did not cash. In 2008, Evdakov shattered the record for "most cashes in a single year" at the WSOP, when he finished in-the-money ten times (the previous record was eight cashes). He has one more opportunities to add to his record, with two WSOPE events still to be played.
• Prior to the start of the final table, a one-of-a-kind attraction featured Doyle Brunson playing against 2007 WSOPE champ Annette Obrestad in a special heads-up match. Billed as the "King versus Queen," Brunson represented old school America against the young up-and-coming European poker prodigy. Played on the Main Stage inside the Empire Casino, a large crowd turned out to watch the duel. In a best two-out-of-three series, Brunson ended up winning the match 2-0. However, it should be noted that on both key losing hands, Obrestad actually started off with the best cards. Her straight lost to a higher straight in the first match. Then, her top pair with best kicker lost when Brunson managed to spike a second pair on the turn of the final hand. Obrestad graciously congratulated the poker legend, while Brunson personally signed over copies of his highly-acclaimed two book series (Super/System 1 and 2) to the reigning "Queen of Poker."
• The buy-in amount for WSOPE Event 1 was £5,000, equivalent to about $9,200 (USD) at the current exchange rate.
• The final table was played on Friday, September 26th. Play began at 4:23 pm and ended at 12:53 – lasting 8.5 hours.
• This tournament is classified as "WSOPE Event 3," as well as "WSOP Event 58" as it is the 58th WSOP gold bracelet event of the 2008 calendar year.
• World Series of Poker Europe Presented by Betfair includes the final four gold bracelet events of the 2008 season. WSOP events 1-55 were played in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA) from 28 May through 14 July. Events 56-59 are played in London, England from 19 September through 2 October.
• All WSOPE results are included in official WSOP records -- including all-time wins, cashes, final table appearances, etc.
• This marks the second consecutive year of WSOPE Presented by Betfair. In 2007, three WSOP gold bracelet events were played in London.
• The turnout for WSOPE Event 3 was 165 players, an identical number last year's attendance.
• The tournament attracted 31 former WSOP gold bracelet winners including:
Josh Arieh
David Benyamine
Chris Bjorin
Doyle Brunson
Brandon Cantu
Allen Cunningham
Freddy Deeb
Eli Elezra
Sherkahn Farnood
Chris "Jesus" Ferguson
Layne Flack
Barry Greenstein
Thor Hansen
Phil Hellmuth
Dan Heimiller
Phil Ivey
John Juanda
Alexander Kravchenko
Ted Lawson
Jeff Madsen
Mike Matusow
Nenad Medic
Daniel Negreanu
Annette Oberstad
Max Pescatori
John Phan
Erik Seidel
David "Devilfish" Ulliott
Jen Voertmann
David Williams
Robert Williamson III
• All four WSOPE events this year are played at Casino at the Empire, located in Leicester Square, in Central London. Leicester Square is best known as the theatre district of the city. Casino at the Empire is part of London Clubs, International, which is owned by Harrah's Entertainment.
• Casino at the Empire holds 25 poker tables. Gaming tables were removed during the 16-day duration of WSOPE in order to make necessary room for the large turnout of players and spectators.
• This year's World Series of Poker is the largest in history. A grand total of 59,405 players have entered the 58 gold bracelet events held so far – with two WSOPE events still to be played. This number exceeds last year's total entries, which was 54,288.
• This was the richest World Series of Poker in history. A grand total of $183,578,497 in prize money awarded (so far) in 2008 makes this the richest event in all of sports. Note: This figure does not include one more upcoming WSOPE events. These figures represent an increase of 15 percent over 2007.
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