Here's the last official recap before we reach the November Nine.

On day 7, we went from 57 players down to 22, a loss of 61%. Play on day 8 will begin at blinds of 100,000/200,000, with antes of 30,000. The average chip stack is approximately 9,360,000. Seven players will begin with sub-25 big blind stacks. They are playing down to the November Nine on day 8.

On day 7, we lost, among others, John Esposito (fifth top 32 finish in the main event and an additional 106th place finish), Andrew “Foucault” Brokos (53rd in 2011, 87th in 2010 and 35th in 2008), JP Kelly (26th in 2011 and 111th in 2010), Sebastian Ruthenberg, Steve Brecher, David Bach, Tony Hachem, Erick Lindgren and the power poker couple of David “Doc” Sands and Erika Moutinho, the last woman in the main event field.

The day 8 seat draw (per pokernews.com, with my notes) is as follows:

Feature Table
Seat 1: Gionni Demers (4,655,000) (rbx88, 23 years old)
Seat 2: Christopher Moore (3,040,000) (28 years old, WSOP final tablist)
Seat 3: Khoa Nguyen (16,435,000) (29 years old)
Seat 4: Konstantinos Mamaliadis (8,195,000) (34 years old)
Seat 5: Kenny Shih (4,530,000) (30 years old, 2nd ME cash)
Seat 6: Samuel Holden (4,730,000) (22 years old)
Seat 7: Lars Bonding (4,140,000) (31 years old, 2nd ME cash, 2-time WSOP final tablist)
Seat 8: -empty-
Seat 9: Anton Makiievskyi (21,045,000) (21 years old)

Secondary Table
Seat 1: Matt Giannetti (8,920,000) (26 years old, 2nd ME cash, 2-time WSOP final tablist)
Seat 2: Aleksandr Mozhnyakov (7,075,000) (25 years old, 5th 2011 WSOP cash)
Seat 3: Scott Schwalich (6,920,000) (24 years old)
Seat 4: Pius Heinz (7,510,000) (22 years old, WSOP final tablist)
Seat 5: Phil “USCPhildo” Collins (13,805,000) (26 years old)
Seat 6: -empty-
Seat 7: Bounahra Badih (3,385,000)
Seat 8: -empty-
Seat 9: Sam Barnhart (4,935,000) (50 years old, 2011 WSOP Circuit champion, WSOP Circuit winner)

Table 334
Seat 1: Martin Staszko (6,380,000) (35 years old, 5th 2011 WSOP cash)
Seat 2: John Hewitt (13,265,000) (23 years old)
Seat 3: -empty-
Seat 4: -empty-
Seat 5: Ben Lamb (Benba) (14,690,000) (ranked #89 in the Global Poker Index as of 7/11/11, 2011 WSOP bracelet winner, leader for 2011 WSOP Player of the Year, 3rd ME cash (including 14th in 2009), 4-time WSOP final tablist, 5th 2011 WSOP cash)
Seat 6: Ryan Lenaghan (10,415,000)
Seat 7: Andrey Pateychuk (16,245,000) (21 years old)
Seat 8: Eoghan O’Dea (19,050,000) (26 years old, 4th 2011 WSOP cash)
Seat 9: Bryan Devonshire (MaverickUSC) (6,190,000) (27 years old, WSOP Circuit winner)

List of players by chip count:

21045000 – Anton Makiievskyi
19050000 - Eoghan O’Dea
16435000 – Khoa Nguyen
16245000 – Andrey Pateychuk
14690000 – Ben Lamb (Benba)
13805000 – Phil “USCPhildo” Collins
13265000 – John Hewitt
10415000 – Ryan Lenaghan
8920000 – Matt Giannetti
8195000 – Konstantinos Mamaliadis
7510000 – Pius Heinz
7075000 – Aleksandr Mozhnyakov
6920000 – Scott Schwalich
6380000 – Martin Staszko
6190000 – Bryan Devonshire (MaverickUSC)
4935000 – Sam Barnhart
4740000 – Samuel Holden
4655000 - Gionni Demers (rbx88)
4530000 – Kenny Shih
4140000 – Lars Bonding
3385000 – Bounahra Badih
3040000 – Christopher Moore

Two WSOP/WSOPE bracelet winners remain (number and year of bracelets in parentheses):

14690000 - Ben Lamb (2011)
4935000 - Sam Barnhart (2011 circuit champion)
(Eliminated on day 7 – David Bach (2009), John Esposito – (1999 - 4 prior top 26 finishes in the main event and an additional 106th place finish), JP Kelly (2 – 2009, 2009 WSOPE), Erick Lindgren (2008), Minh Nguyen (2 – 2003, 2004), Sebastian Ruthenberg (2008))

As for the 2011 WSOP Player of the Year, Ben Lamb has taken over the lead from Phil Hellmuth, who has 710.25 points. Ben Lamb had 659.05 points coming into the main event but has already gained 75 more points from finishing in the top 20% of the money group and now has 724.05 points.

No former WSOP ME champions or non-champion final tablists from the last five main events remain in the field.

Here is an unofficial list of twoplustwo players remaining in the field (based on original list prepared by nivelles piret as updated by amfox):

9980000 – Ben Lamb (Benba)
5970000 – Bryan Devonshire (MaverickUSC)
1625000 - Gionni Demers (rbx88)
(Eliminated on day 7 – bob2bob, cardcore, Ddayy, Deuce2High, Foucault, rubenrtv, Steve Brecher)

Nationalities of final 22 players, per WSOP list and public information:

11 – United States (see below)
2 - Russia (Mozhnyakov, Pateychuk)
1 - Canada (K.Nguyen), Costa Rica (Hewitt), Czech Republic (Staszko), Denmark (Bonding), Germany (Heinz), Ireland (O’Dea), South Africa (Mamaliadis), Ukraine (Makievskyi), United Kingdom (Holden)

Of the US players, WSOP-listed addresses by state:

3 – Nevada (Collins, Devonshire, Giannetti)
2 – Ohio (Moore, Schwalich)
1 - Arkansas (Barnhart), California (Shih), Florida (Badih), Louisiana (Lenaghan), New Jersey (Demers), Oklahoma (Lamb)

Today, we go until we reach the November Nine! Good luck, all.

Can't believe it's (almost) over!

Looking forward to the day 8 meltdown/blow-up that seems to happen every year

are there really multiple USC (university of southern california) kids in these last 20 people

gonna be the most boring final 9 ever

don't know one single player left in the field

haha

The most painful knockout in all of tournament poker will happen today. May God have mercy on the very unfortunate soul who busts in 10th place

Great recap!

Previous WSOP all-time cashes and live winnings (according to Hendon Mob):

Player / Nationality Prior WSOP Cashes Live Winnings $

Anton Makiievskiy Ukraine 0 59K
Eoghan O'Dea Ireland 5 764K
Khoa Nguyen Canada 3 19K
Andrey Pateychuk Russia 0 3K
Ben Lamb USA 12 2.565M
Phil Collins USA 8 113K
John Hewitt USA 1 17K
Ryan Lenaghan USA 0 160K
Matt Gianetti USA 10 492K
Kosta Mamaliadis South Africa 0 0
Pius Heinz Germany 1 83K
Aleksandr Mozhnyakov Russia 4 43K
Scott Scwalich USA 0 6K
Martin Staszko Czech Republic 4 83K
Bryan Devonshire USA 10 1.212M
Sam Barnhart USA 1 458K
Sam Holden UK 0 11K
Gionni Demers USA 0 14K
Kenny Shih USA 6 89K
Lars Bonding Norway 14 1.509M
Badih Bounahra USA 1 73K
Chris Moore USA 5 1.772M

Chip leader is known on HMDB as Makiievskiy, not Makiievskyi.
Only 7/22 have lifetime live earnings exceeding the current pay band of £302K.

Anyone got some online earning figures?

no

not sure about devo but phildo's is Univ of South Carolina.

yah i agree, LOL snoozeaments

obv want to see uscphildo, maverickusc and benba get there so we can see some good thinking poker

otherwise... meh

I suppose, ESPN isn't happy. All the famous pros are out as well as the Sands/Moutinho couple.

Instead there are 11 boring Americans and 11 non-Americans. Well Sam Barnhart seems to be very likeable (for the average viewer) but I don't think he will make it to the final table!

They're not there to entertain 2+2ers

Devo apparently went to USC for 3.5 years but dropped out. He was also born in Southern California, so I'm not sure why the traitor wears all the Giants gear.

these guys are soooo boring, i never thought I'd ever say that I'm not really looking forward to this

Pius Heinz is one of the main shareholders of Heinz Ketchup.

+1

even moreso if ben lamb doesnt make it. i feel like at least that would be a pretty awesome story

Doesn't matter how many times people post about not knowing any of them or it's going to be sooooooooooooo boring, it is what it is. Either watch or don't watch, just stop bitching about it all the time, it gets really old.

I've played with Eoghan O'Dea before and he is a fantastic player, well known around the UK & Ire circuit.

Staszko is filfedra on Stars, $295k earnings, pretty cool ROI as well

Obviously the big names won't make it anymore for three reasons:

1. They are outnumbered

2. So many unknowns are so much better than them in NL Holdem.

3. Rich spoiled kids like Heinz the Ketchup man just run over the field

Yup, I'm going to have to agree with this in some ways. The way the WSOP Televised events go down - they ALWAYS take particular attention to a) building up the heroes who make the FT), b) building up the villains who make the FT and c) building up who the "true professionals" are. Just like in 08' ME, we had Chino Rheem (a previously relatively unknown player) make it seem like he was the TOP ESTABLISHED PRO at the FT and was the one to beat. Just like Candio was made to be the villian last year and Begleiter the year before him, etc etc etc.

So regardless of who makes the FT this year - just like every other year before this one - throughout the ME Televised coverage they build up the "top pro", the "villian", the "hero" and they "everyman" and by the time November rolls along, the majority of NVG will be filled with "_____ appreciation threads" and "OMG I HOPE ______ wins BECAUSE HE IS TEH BEST PRO!!!"

what a boring ft will be..

stopped reading here

****'s gonna be so boring. For real.

You can bang your keyboard, stamp your feet repeatedly and throw all the tantrums of the day but your beloved "pro's" still won't appear in front of your screen. Time to get over it son.

Edit:- Hey, maybe you can create a new thread about how it will be really boring. You guys can all post in there as one!

God Dammit even JP Kelly's gone now. When will there be a WSOP with a final table full of pros?

Pretty sick ROI. Nice 91K score in May... then jumped on a plane to Vegas!