2009 World Series of Poker Main Event
The 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event payout schedule was recently released on Day 1D of the tournament. And the top 9 players who are fortunate and skillful enough to make the final table, will become instant millionaires!. Player number 9 will receive $1,263,602 for their efforts and the winner and champion will take home a huge $8,546,435!. This money comes from a prize pool that reached $61,043,600 that will go to the top 648 players. Just the pool for the final table players alone will be $27,219,668. Interest in the WSOP has been skyrocketing ever since 2003 when Chris Moneymaker showed that anyone who wants to try has a chance to become a champion. This year had a total of 6,494 individuals pay $10,000 each for the chance at making it big. And so many tried to enter at the last minute on Day 1D, that hundreds were turned away representing millions of more dollars that could have been added to the pool. The WSOP has handed out so much money to players, that on celebration of it’s 40th annual tournament series they stated a total of over $1 Billion dollars has been given away. ($1,041,265,271 to be exact.) In fact, when the WSOP reached the 56th tournament held this year they announced they had made a total of 131 millionaires, meaning that these players have won in excess of $1,000,000 or more, with some of the youngest being in their twenties. 
The most recent young player winning over $1 million is Matt Hawrilenko, who at the age of 27 recently became champion of the Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em tournament and filled his wheelbarrow up with $1,003,218 for his efforts. Such outstanding and exciting feats like this have kept the WSOP viewing on ESPN at the top of the cable station’s ratings for the past 5 years. Poker is the Game!