WSOP 2011 finished

With all events played and only the November Nine yet to finish the WSOP 2011 has come to an end

The World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2011 has come to a dramatic close with this being one of the most successful years ever, much bigger than predicted by the vast majority of poker fans and pundits. Coming in the wake of the April 15th, Black Friday, crack down by the United States authorities that saw the largest online poker sites in the world ejected from the United States market, by far the biggest market in the world. There were huge fears that the 2011 WSOP would be a washout as a result with players unable to find the money to take with them to Las Vegas to compete in the tournaments.
What actually happened was that the events of Black Friday occurred close enough to the WSOP that players were able to scrape together the last of their bankrolls to make one last big shove at the poker festival to make sure that they have a decent size bankroll to play live games, which are now their only source of income. Although Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker failed to pay back their US players, Poker Stars did, allowing more US players to attend the WSOP with money in their pockets than otherwise could have.
The WSOP 2011 was a massive poker festival and with 57 winner’s bracelets distributed the poker rankings have, as per usual in the wake of the WSOP, been changed to reflect the new status of a whole range of players who managed to dominate the biggest poker series in the world. The Main Event has been played down to the final nine and we await the final action table that is to come in November as the now famous November nine get set to battle it out for the biggest prize in the poker world.
This year the nine finalists are from all over the world as opposed to previous years when the majority are from the United States. Perhaps this already reflects the way in which Black Friday has affected American poker. British fans will be pleased to see that Sam Holden made it, although with the smallest chip stack as things stand. Other interesting facts are that six of the November Nine are in their twenties making this most certainly a young man’s game. Also for the first time Belize and the Czech Republic are represented at the table.