Tournament Notes:
--The winner of the $2,000 buy-in Seven-Card Stud Championship was Jeffrey Lisandro from Salerno, Italy. He is a 41-year-old investor and professional poker player. This was his first-ever WSOP victory.
-- Lisandro was actually born in Perth, Australia to Italian immigrant parents. He now owns homes in several places - including Las Vegas, Italy, and Australia. Lisandro made his fortune investing in real estate.
-- Lisandro is currently single. He has one child.
-- Lisandro is a regular face in some of the highest-limit cash games in the world. In fact, Lisandro concentrated much of his efforts in high-stakes cash game play before finally focusing on tournaments in recent years.
-- Lisandro's nickname is "the Iceman," given to him for his cool demeanor at the poker table. He commonly wears black, and a 1930s businessman-style fedora.
-- First place paid $118,426. To Lisandro, far more important than the prize money he collected was the prestige bestowed by winning a WSOP gold bracelet. In recent years, Lisandro was on the short list of poker players considered to be the best in the game never to have won a title at the World Series.
-- Prior to this event, Lisandro did win a $10,000 buy-in WSOP-related tournament. He was the victor at Harvey's Lake Tahoe in the WSOP-Circuit championship held in May 2006. Lisandro's win at Lake Tahoe was also televised by ESPN.
-- ESPN made a last-minute decision to televise this final table due to an exciting lineup of the final eight players.
-- Nick Frangos from New Jersey, a.k.a. "Little Nicky" is one of the best "unknown" poker players in the game. Although he has yet to win at the WSOP, he does have eight cashes. This was his third WSOP final table appearance - with showings of 3rd, 4th, 4th, and now second (in this event).
-- If there was an award for best all-around Stud-game player so far this year, it would likely go to Nesbitt Coburn from Minneapolis, MN. The third-place finisher in this tournament, he also came in second earlier at this World Series, in the $1,500 seven-card stud event. Hence, Coburn now has a 2nd and 3rd place finish in 2007.
-- Superstar Daniel Negreanu went out in disappointing fashion. He arrived at the final table ranked second in chips, but busted out in 6th place.
-- The sixth-place finisher Greg Pappas made his return to the final table after an unwanted hiatus from the tournament poker scene. He was one of the East Coast's top players during the 1990s and gravitated to poker after playing pool professionally in his earlier years.
-- "The Professor" just missed making it to the final table. Howard Lederer ended up as the 9th-place finisher.
-- Mel Judah, from London, England cashed for the 39th time in his WSOP career, with his 10th-place finish. He is now ranked 11th on the all-time list.
-- Four-time WSOP gold bracelet winner David Chiu finished 12th.
-- Seven-Card Stud has long been considered an "East Coast game." It was the dominant form of poker played at casinos in Atlantic City and Connecticut until the Hold'em craze invaded the Northeast a few years ago.
Nolan Dalla
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