"November Nine" Plays for $29 Million

The final table of nine remaining from the among the 7,319 participants who entered the $10,000 No-Limit Texas Hold'em World Championship at the 41st annual World Series of Poker held earlier this year is finally here.

The finalists will reconvene in the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas on Saturday (Nov. 6) at Noon to begin playing for over $29 million in prize money, of which the winner will take home $8.9 million.

On Monday the final two players will square off starting at 8:00 p.m. All nine players will walk away with handsome pay days. The first player knocked out will collect $811,823. All of the others will walk away millionaires. Runner-up is worth $5.5 million.

The thrilling competition brings back memories of Walter Clyde "Puggy" Pearson, professional gambler, poker player and former World Series of Poker champion, who once made this observation: "Ain't only three things to gambling – knowing the 60/40 end of the proposition, money management and knowin' yourself".

Some years ago the editors of Money magazine pondered the correlation between poker players and investment money managers and got an idea. Why not arrange a Texas Hold'em Poker match pitting the nation's most successful financial advisors against professional poker players? The idea gave birth to the Money Poker Challenge, a winner-take-all competition which was held at Harrah's Las Vegas in late 2004.

A quartet of financial gurus was pitted against professional players Johnny Chan, a two-time winner of the World Series of Poker, and Jennifer Harman, one of the top female players in the world. The table of eight included a writer from Money magazine and one other player.

In case you are interested, the one-day tournament was chronicled in the May 2005 edition of the publication.

The winner was Mario Gabelli, the CEO of an investment firm that managed nearly $30-billion in assets.

Most interesting of all the players was John Rogers, the CEO of a money management firm, who finished third. He found the competition so intriguing that he decided to enter the 2005 World Series of Poker.

"The thing that was interesting is that they thought there was a real correlation between the skills you need to be a good poker player and being a good money manager," said Rogers. "The themes of discipline, patience and creativity all come to play. I thought it would be fun one more time to have a chance to play in the one big World Series and to have that once in a lifetime experience."

Rogers went for the showcase main event of the WSOP, the No Limit Texas Hold'em Championship, which drew 5,619 players from all around the world and a then-record $56,190,000 prize pool.

"I was pleased just to make it through the first day," said Rogers, who lost after the first break on the second day. "Just to feel the energy was something. The intensity was really there. Everybody was really concentrating and it was quiet a lot. Not much bantering at all. The professionalism of the group was a little higher than I had anticipated."