The 37th Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) was held at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, and ran from June 25 to August 10, 2006.
The 45-event schedule was highlighted with the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em World Championship that was the largest in history with 8,773 players. The staggering prize pool of over $82.5 million would pay the top 873 players with first-place prize set at $12 million.
Jamie Gold of Malibu, California, steam-rolled the final few days of the tournament before eventually defeating Paul Wasicka of Westminster, Colorado, to win poker’s largest prize at the time. Gold features in three of the hands in the 2006 WSOP Main Event Top 5 Hands video on PokerGO.
The countdown begins with a monster laydown from Hank Azaria with pocket kings, while the next hand is one that happens on the final hand of Day 1 when Joe Hachem of Melbourne, Australia, turns quads.
Prahlad Friedman of Richmond, California, is featured in the next two hands with Gold. The first sees Friedman call Gold’s hand exactly, but incorrectly folds, while the next sees his eventual elimination in 20th place. The final hand on the countdown sees Gold, Wasicka, and Michael Binger of Las Vegas, Nevada, play a huge three-way pot as the only players remaining in the Main Event.
Watch PokerGO’s 2006 WSOP Main Event Top 5 hands now to see where each hand ranks.
About the World Series of Poker
The World Series of Poker® is the largest, richest and most prestigious gaming event in the world, having awarded more than $3.29 billion in prize money and the prestigious gold bracelet, globally recognized as the sport’s top prize. Featuring a comprehensive slate of tournaments in every major poker variation, the WSOP is poker’s longest-running tournament in the world, dating back to 1970. In 2019, the event attracted 187,298 entrants from 118 different countries to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and awarded more than $293 million in prize money. In addition, the WSOP has formed groundbreaking alliances in broadcasting, digital media and corporate sponsorships, while successfully expanding the brand internationally with the advent of WSOP Europe in 2007 and the WSOP Asia-Pacific in 2013 and the WSOP International Circuit Series in 2015. All WSOP events are subject to the then-current and applicable WSOP tournament rules. For more information, please visit www.wsop.com.