A reunion of was held during the World Series of Poker Paradise this week as former Main Event champs were invited to battle it out for seat into the $25,000 buy-in $60 million guaranteed Super Main Event that started on Wednesday.
The Main Event Champions Invitational attracted 16 former champions, with the top four winning a seat.
The champs who showed up were Phil Hellmuth (1989), Huck Seed (1996), Scotty Nguyen (1998), Chris Moneymaker (2003), Greg Raymer (2204), Jamie Gold (2006), Joe Cada (2009), Greg Merson (2012), Ryan Riess (2013), Martin Jacobson (2014), Scott Blumstein (2017), Hossein Ensan (2019), Koray Aldemir (2021), Espen Jorstad (2022), Daniel Weinman (2023) and Michael Mizrachi, who won the Main Event this year.
The four players who won their way into the Super Main Event were Raymer, Nguyen, Riess and Blumstein. Ensan was the unfortunate bubble boy.
Officials asked the players to play down to a solo champion, which the former champs were all happy to do to see who would be king of the day as the champion of champions.
Reiss was the first of the four to go, followed by Blumstein, who took himself out of contention by betting all but one of his chips before folding to Nguyen’s push. He was knocked out the very next hand.
“I wouldn’t be here without these two guys,” said Blumstein. “I wanted to let these two legends of the game battle it out against each other.”
That left Raymer and Nguyen to fight for what would only be bragging rights, and the two went to war, playing for more than hour.
“It was a lot of fun. There was a lot of chatter, telling stories and jokes and all that,” Raymer told Jeff Platt after the final hand. “It’s a freeroll, so no-one is losing money, everyone’s in a good mood even when they take a beat.
I mean, in this crowd, they’re probably not going to get too upset. But it’s always fun to win something big or small, and it’s fun to do it against a tough field like this.”
Raymer noted that the winner of the Super Main will get more than the $5 million he won in 2004 by taking down the Main Event while wearing his dinosaur spectacles.
The winner of the Super Main, of which the third of its four starting days continues today, will earn around $8 million.
About The Author
