The 40th Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) was held from May 27 to July 15, 2009, from inside the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The series had 57 events on the schedule with the finale being the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em World Championship which started on July 3 with four opening flights. The 6,494-player field created a prize pool of over $61 million that paid the top 648 finishers.
Joe Cada of Shelby Township, Michigan, would be the youngest player to ever win the WSOP Main Event after he defeated Darvin Moon of Oakland, Maryland, to pocket the $8,547,044 first-place prize. Both players dominate the top few spots in the 2009 WSOP Main Event Top 5 Hands video on PokerGO.
Two big bluffs kickoff the countdown as Lex Veldhuis of Rotterdam, Netherlands, and 2004 World Champion Greg Raymer of Raleigh, North Carolina, get lucky with their opponent incorrectly folding the best hand. Next up sees Phil Ivey of Las Vegas, Nevada, seeing his Main Event run ending in seventh-place after being outdrawn by Moon.
Cada’s run in the Main Event easily could have ended in third-place if he didn’t find a two-outer against Antoine Saout of Paris, France, while the final hand in the countdown was a life-changing one for both players. Billy Kopp of Erlanger, Kentucky, went to war with a flopped flush against the only player to have more chips than him – Moon. Unfortunately for Kopp, Moon held a bigger flush to send Kopp to the rail in 12th place.
Watch PokerGO’s 2009 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.