Welcome to the Pot-Limit Hold’em Championship!

Welcome to the first $10,000 Championship Event of the 2011 World Series of Poker. At 5 PM local time, players will make their way to the Rio to take part in the Pot-Limit Hold’em Championship. As of late, the European contingents of players have found tremendous success in this event. In fact, it was a Hungarian by the name of Valdemar Kwaysser who captured the bracelet in 2010, preceded by John Kabbaj of the United Kingdom the year before. Other winners of this event include Canadian Nenad Medic (2008- $794,112), Allen Cunningham (2007- $487,287), Jason Lester (2006- $550,764), and Brian Wilson (2005- $370,685).

Last year, this same event drew 268 entrants and created a prizepool of $2,519,200. Given it was a championship event, one of the more popular ones at that, the tournament appealed to poker’s elite. Some of the players who entered and ultimately cashed were Mike Matusow (26th- $21,665), Amit Makhija (17th- $27,282), Sandra Naujoks (15th- $34,639), Allen Kessler (14th- $34,639), and Sam Stein (10th- $44,010).

Here is a look at the results from last year’s final table:

2010 WSOP $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em Results

Place	Player	Hometown	Earnings
1st	Valdemar Kwaysser	Budapest, Hungary	$617,214
2nd	Matt Marafioti	Toronto, Ontario	$381,507
3rd	James Calderaro	Venice, Florida	$$284,845
4th	Konstantin Bucherl	Rengensburg, Germany	$214,106
5th	Daniel Stern	New York, New York	$$161,934
6th	Tom Marchese	Boonton, New Jersey	$123,264
7th	Peter Jetten	Toronto, Ontario	$94,394
8th	Blair Rodman	Las Vegas, Nevada	$72,754
9th	Alexander Kuzmin	Moscow, Russia	$56,404

Action is set to kickoff in about an hour and a half, so be sure to check back then for all the actions and eliminations from the $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em Championship!