Despite the promise of a televised final table for both its Pot Limit Omaha Championship and Main Event, it was a small crowd at the United States Poker Championships (USPC), with only 32 players entering the Omaha event and 154 taking part in the Main Event. The tournament series, hosted by the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, ran from November 2nd until shortly before Thanksgiving and featured a total of 24 different events with buy-ins ranging from $340 to $5,250. Prior to the start of the series, the tournament staff announced that cable television channel Spike TV would be on hand to film a couple of the contests. The first televised event was the $2,625 buy-in Pot Limit Omaha tournament. Although the field was a scant 32 players, it was packed with some big name pros, several of whom made it to the final table. Amnon Filippi, Matthew Matros, Matt Glantz, and Allie Prescott all made the feature table, with Prescott taking home the victory worth $36,000. The second televised tournament, the USPC Main Event , drew a much larger crowd than the Omaha contest and saw substantial growth over last year’s running. The combined appeal of a televised event plus a smaller buy-in helped to essentially triple the size of the field between 2008 and 2009. Last year, the event featured a buy-in of $10,000 and only drew 52 runners. Some of the 154 players who turned up to play in this year’s tournament included Matt “All In At 420” Stout, UB.com pro Liv Boeree, Allen Kessler, Michael and Nick Binger, Joe “hoodini10” Udine, Adam Junglen, Jeff “yellowsub” Williams, and Thayer Rasmussen. The final table featured a number of notable names, including the 2001 USPC Champion Men “The Master” Nguyen . Nguyen defeated fellow pro John Juanda heads-up in 2001 to take the $228,000 first place prize. This time around, the tables were turned and it was Nguyen who had to settle for a runner-up finish. Nguyen was joined at the final table by Nick Binger, World Series of Poker ( WSOP ) bracelet winner Brian Lemke, and online poker player Eric “avrilsharapova” Ladny. The chip leader going into the final table was not one of the known pros though, it was William Brindise , a New Jersey local who started the final seven-handed table with more than 1.5 million chips – twice that of his next closest competitor, Nguyen. Ladny rounded out the top three and the trio of players started and ended the day in the exact same positions on the leaderboard. Ladny busted out in third place, setting up a heads-up match between Nguyen and Brindise. It would be the local who prevailed over the professional, as Brindise defeated Nguyen to take down the first place prize worth $261,800; Nguyen earned $138,600 for his runner-up finish. Although he may be lacking the experience of his formidable heads-up opponent, Brindise is no stranger to poker success. Prior to his win at the USPC, he had nearly $130,000 in tournament winnings to his credit, including a win in a Trump Classic event in 2005, several cashes at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, and an in-the-money finish at the 2004 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event. With the victory in Atlantic City, Brindise’s career winnings are now close to $400,000. Here are the results from the final table of the 2009 USPC Main Event: 1st Place: William Brindise – $261,800 2nd Place: Men “the Master” Nguyen – $138,600 3rd Place: Eric Ladny – $77,000 4th Place: Gordon Eng – $53,900 5th Place: Brian Lemke – $46,200 6th Place: Nick Binger – $30,800 7th Place: Anton Smolyanskiy – $23,100
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