$9.15 million went on the line Sunday, November 9, 2008, as the last nine players of the 2008 World Series of Poker settled at the felt tables at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.  The final table will determine this year’s champion of No Limit Texas Hold’Em, and the nine men were grinning from ear to ear as they dumped their chips from June onto the table to happily stack them for play.  The 1,000 seats in the Penn & Teller theater were taken up mostly by friends and family of the players, and photographers snapped pictures of the players as they prepared to get started for the main event.

Chip leader Dennis Phillips, described as being very grounded, waved to his friends and family as well as his sponsor, gambling website PokerStars.  All of the players were introduced and after waiting 117 days for this moment, it had finally come.  2007 main even champion Jerry Yang kicked off the game by announcing, “Dealer, shuffle up and deal.”  Seven players will be eliminated by the end of play on Sunday and the last two standing will play a heads-up game on Monday, November 10, 2008 to win the final payout amounts.  At midnight Pacific Time, four players were still standing: Dennis Phillips, Ylon Schwartz, Ivan Demidov, and Peter Eastgate.

While the chips themselves have no monetary value, they tell the players where they stand in comparison with their opponents.  When a player loses all of their chips, they are eliminated from the game.  Phillips was leading the pack followed by Ivan Demidov, Scott Montgomery, Peter Eastgate, Ylon Schwartz, Darus Suharto, David ‘Chino’ Rheem and Kelly Kim.

The 117 day waiting period was designed to help drum up more interest in the World Series of Poker and allow fans of the poker tournament to watch the final game live on ESPN instead of waiting months from the final game to the time the cable channel aired it.  Two of the players were from Canada and stood to be the first Canadians to win the WSOP.  Eastgate, the youngest player at the table would take the title of youngest WSOP Champion if he should happen to win.  There was not one well known name sitting at this year’s main event table, although Demidov is a semi-professional poker player in his native Russia and Scott Montgomery is an up and coming poker player in the poker community.