From July 5 to July 15 a field of 6,240 players has been reduced to a final table of nine players, who will return to Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino on November 8 and battle it out for the world champion title, a gold bracelet and the top prize of $7,680,021! The 2015 November Nine will be broadcasted live on ESPN.
Below you'll find seating assignments and chip counts, the final table payout structure, and some information on all finalists (biggest stack to smallest stack)
Seat 1: Zvi Stern - 29,800,000 (74 bb)
Seat 2: Pierre Neuville - 21,075,000 (52 bb)
Seat 3: Joshua Beckley - 11,800,000 (27 bb)
Seat 4: Max Steinberg - 20,200,000 (50 bb)
Seat 5: Thomas Cannuli - 12,250,000 (30 bb)
Seat 6: Joe McKeehen - 63,100,000 (160 bb)
Seat 7: Patrick Chan - 6,225,000 (15 bb)
Seat 8: Federico Butteroni - 6,200,000 (15 bb)
Seat 9: Neil Blumenfield - 22,000,000 (55 bb)
Joe McKeehen - 63,100,000 chips
Age: 24
Country: USA
Previous WSOP cashes: 8
Previous WSOP bracelets: 0
McKeehen is a 24-year-old poker pro from Pennylvania who learned to play poker around 2003 watching poker on TV. He has come very close to a gold bracelet in the past. The fact is that he finished second in last year's premier of the Monster Stack event, earning $820k in prize money. He's already guaranteed to take home more than that on the Main Event final table, given that the next player to hit the rail will receive more than 1 million dollars.
Zvi Stern - 29,800,000 chips
Age: 36
Country: Israel
Previous WSOP cashes: 1
Previous WSOP bracelets: 0
Zvi Stern is the second November Niner from Israel in the past two years (the first one was Amir Lehavot who finished 3rd in 2013). Aside from this guaranteed cash, Stern only had one previous in-the-money finish at the WSOP, a 63rd place in the $1,500 Limit Hold'em Shootout in 2008. He's currently 85th on the Israel all-time money list with $49,595, but no matter what happens on this final table he's guaranteed to make it into sixth place (ahead of Rafi Amit with $956,293) on that list.
Neil Blumenfield - 22,000,000
Age: 61
Country: USA
Previous WSOP cashes: 2
Previous WSOP bracelets: 0
Neil Blumenfield, from San Francisco, has two cashes on his WSOP resume, including a 285th finish in the 2012 Main Event for $38,453 (his best live tournament score prior to this tournament).
Aside from poker, Blumenfield has a bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He's currently the President, Chief Operating Officer and a Director of Elastic Intelligence, Inc.
Pierre Neuville - 21,075,000 Chips
Age: 72
Country: Belgium
Previous WSOP cashes: 19
Previous WSOP bracelets: 0
At the age of 72, Pierre Neuville is the oldest November Niner in history (previous record holder was Steve Gee, 57, when he made the final table in 2012. In addition, he's the first Belgian to make the November Nine since the concept was introduced in 2008.
Neuville has 19 WSOP cashes under his belt and also several cashes on the European Poker Tour dating back to 2008. In total, he had $2,174,187 in live tournament earnings before making this final table.
Max Steinberg - 20,200,000 Chips
Age: 27
Country: USA
Previous WSOP cashes: 11
Previous WSOP bracelets: 1
Max Steinberg is the only player in the November Nine with a gold bracelet to his name. It was back in 2012 that he topped a field of 2,705 entries in Event #33 $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em to claim his first bracelet and $440,238.
Besides his 11 cashes at the WSOP, Steinberg finished runner-up in the 2012 Poker Tour Legend of Poker Main Event ($293k) and in the 2013 Southern Comfort 100 WSOP National Championship ($219k).
Thomas Cannuli - 12,250,000 Chips
Age: 23
Country: USA
Previous WSOP cashes: 2
Previous WSOP bracelets: 0
New Jersey native Thomas Cannuli, 23, is the youngest finalist of this year's final table. Cannuli, who mainly plays cash games, finished fourth in chips after Day 2 in last year's main event (Phil Ivey was the chip leader) and ultimately finished in 691st place for $18,406, which was his largest tournament before making the 2015 November Nine.
Josh Beckley - 11,800,000 Chips
Age: 24
Country: USA
Previous WSOP cashes: 4
Previous WSOP bracelets: 0
Josh Beckley, from Marlton, New Jersey has four WSOP cashes on his resume - all coming from this summer's World Series of Poker. This will be his fifth cash and the biggest since he's guaranteed to take home over a million dollars. Before the Main Event, he had $219,526 in career earnings, which includes his best cash of $98,348 for winning the 2014 Parx Casino Big Stax VII $1,500 Event.
Patrick Chan - 6,225,000
Age: 26
Country: USA
Previous WSOP cashes: 4
Previous WSOP bracelets: 0
Patrick Chan began his poker career online playing multi-table tourneys, but he made a transition to live tournament after Black Friday. He has just over half a million dollars in live tournament earnings to date - and now he's guarantee to double that amount regardless of how things goes on the final table in November.
Federico Butteroni - 6,200,000
Age: 25
Country: Italy
Previous WSOP cashes: 2
Previous WSOP bracelets: 0
25-year-old Italian Federico Butteroni had two WSOP cashes prior to this tournament (both of which came this summer), including a 20th place finish in the Monster Stack Event for $45,633. His only other five-figure scored occurred two weeks later when he won a Rio Daily Deepstack for $31,756.
UPDATE 16/7/2015: ESPN Broadcast of the 2015 WSOP and November Nine
This year's final table (November Nine) broadcast will expand from two to there days. Coverage starts on Sunday, November 8th at 5:30 pm PST and continues until four players remain. Then, second day coverage starts on Monday, November 9th at 5 pm PST and continues until heads-up play. Finally, on Tuesday, November 10th at 6 pm PST, the heads-up match for poker's world champion title will air until a winner has been crowned.
However, coverage of the 2015 WSOP will already begin airing on September 14th and continue into the beginning of November. The show will air on Mondays the first three weeks, then change to Sunday nights on October 4th.
