The big clean-up is underway and the 2012 World Series of Poker is all over bar the shouting, but there’ll be plenty of shouting come the last week of October when the final nine players will come back to contest the Main Event final table.

27 largely unknown players started the day with a chance at poker’s biggest prize but before midnight 18 of them were going home heartbroken.

Nico Maag and Jan Heimann were the first to bow out. The two Germans fell in the first level of play, having come into the day pretty short stacked. When the blinds went up, several players found themselves under pressure and before the dinner break 10 more would fall including Daniel Strelitz, Cylus Watson, Paul Volpe, Jamie Robbins, Robert Buckenmayer and Percy Mahatan.

Two of the remaining 15 were women; both Gaelle Bauman and Elisabeth Hille had a shot at becoming the first woman at the final table since 1985. Shortly after the players reconvened Danny Wong got knocked out and then it was the turn of the chip leader at the start of play Marc Ladouceur who lost a flip and was sent packing.

Scott Abrams went in 12th after missing a flush draw against a flopped set and then with the elimination of Elisabeth Hill in 11th when her AQ couldn’t connect we were down to the unofficial final table, which provides some of the biggest drama in poker every year.

It was a short affair this year though. Gaelle Baumann was very short but scored a timely double up when she picked up Kings, but she wasn’t long handing it all back when her A9o didn’t get lucky against AJo, and she was our 10th place finisher, picking up $590,442.

So the October Nine is set and leading them into battle will be Jesse Sylvia on almost 44m chips, well ahead of Hungarian Andras Koroknai on 29m who was involved in his fair share of controversial hands in the last few days. Behind him is Greg Merson on 28m, and then Russell Thomas is a little further back on 24.8m.

There’s a big gap between Thomas and Steven Gee and Michael Esposito, who’ll both return with right around 16m with Robert Salaburu (15m), Jacob Balsiger (13m), and Jeremy Ausmus (9.8m) rounding our the line-up.

When they come back in October the blinds will be set at 200,000/400,000 with a 40,000 chip ante. So, until then from the Rio.. Adios!

Author Profile: Rob O’Connor+

written by Rob \\ tags: Las Vegas, Main Event, November Nine, Poker, Rio, World Series of Poker, WSOP