Event #43
Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $2,000
Number of Entries: 472
Total Prize Money: $859,040
Date of Tournament: June 26-28, 2007
Click here to view the official results.
Tournament Notes:
The winner of the $2,000 buy-in Limit Hold’em championship was Saifuddin Ahmad, a 59-year-old business owner from Newport Beach, CA. He is married and has two children. This was his first victory at the World Series of Poker.
Ahmad is originally from the nation of Bangladesh. He came to the United States to attend college in his late teens and earned a Masters Degree in chemical engineering from Cal-Tech.
Ahmad now owns several Tony Roma’s restaurants in the Los Angeles area.
Ahmad first learned to play bridge and competed in several tournaments. He gravitated to poker playing in recent years. This is his third consecutive year to play at the WSOP.
The final 15 minutes of the tournament was a dream come true for Ahmad. He was roughly even in chips with his opponent. Then, Ahmad won several key hands, including spiking a key river card to make a straight on the final hand of the night to achieve his victory. First place paid $217,329.
Ahmad is proud of his first WSOP gold bracelet. But he is even more proud of his two children. His son graduated from Harvard. His daughter graduated from Cal-Berkeley.
William Jensen, from Washington, DC was the runner up. During the final table, he was cheered on by his two friends – Alex Borteh and Eric Froelich, both former gold bracelet winners.
Hal Havlisch, from Fresno, CA took 6th place. Havlisch has organized poker tournaments in his local area that raised several thousand dollars for families in financial distress.
David Plastik, the bombastic poker pro from Las Vegas, finished 11th. In the 1980s Plastik was a highly-successful rock music photographer, and formally worked for (now deceased) comedian Sam Kinison.
One of Europe’s top poker writers Rolf Slotboom, from Amsterdam, took 38th place.
Participating in this tournament was Dr. Jerry Buss, the owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers.