'Average Joe' wins World Series of Poker, $7.68 million
You're never going to throw the deciding strike in a World Series, or make the decisive catch in a Super Bowl. You're never going to don a green jacket at Augusta National or be first across the line at the Daytona 500. But you can win the greatest prize in poker, and guys like Joe McKeehen are proof.
McKeehen, a self-proclaimed "Average Joe" from the outskirts of Philadelphia, won the World Series of Poker and its $7.68 million prize on Tuesday while sporting a vintage Allen Iverson jersey. Playing No-Limit Texas Hold'-Em, McKeehen, 24, used a love of numbers and a relentless, Iversonian wear-'em-down style to take down the competition.
His final head-to-head showdown came against Joshua Beckley, 25. Beckley drew a pair of fours, giving him a slight initial edge over McKeehen's Ace-10, and went all-in. But the flop brought another 10, and soon enough the hand, and the tournament, belonged to McKeehen.
"I love seeing a dominating force come in with the chip lead, hold the chip lead, continue to play well, continue to overcome obstacles and win," said Jack Effel, the World Series of Poker's tournament director. "That shows the true skill of the game."
This year's WSOP Main Event featured 6,420 players, each of whom ponied up $10,000 this summer for the shot at a coveted bracelet. The World Series as a whole started in May and consisted of 68 events over 51 days. The Main Event began during the summer, and the field winnowed down to the "November Nine." McKeehen came into the November portion of the tournament with the chip lead, and proceeded to knock off each of his competitors in turn, beating six of the eight in head-to-head showdowns. Entering the final nine-player round, McKeehen had 63.1 million chips, more than twice as much as any challenger, and by the end of Monday, he had 128 million chips, more than three times his two remaining opponents.
The World Series dates to 1970, when it began as an invitation-only event. It's now open to virtually anyone with the requisite five-figure entry fee. Numbers are down in the World Series from poker's heyday in the mid-2000s, a time when online poker boomed and poker stars were the focus of books, movies, and popular mythology. But governmental crackdowns on poker strangled much of the casual interest in the game. Even so, it remains one competition where anyone can walk away with the sport's greatest prize, as Joe McKeehen just proved.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
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