Bodog Beat

This was the field for the record-setting Event No. 2 here at the 2008 WSOP and with half of the WSOP events done, things are just getting warmed up. (Bodog Beat Image)

As we mentioned this morning, the 2008 WSOP has been running smoothly and as if Harrah's PR whiz Nolan Dalla had read our post, the WSOP communications machine sent out a press release with a bunch of figures, numbers and highlights from the first half of the 2008 WSOP. This is where we pick the most interesting ones and make them a litle more palatabe, so here we go.

So far (well, as of earlier this afternoon), there have been 24,642 total entrants with 821 average entrants per event. There has been $59,117,189 in total prize money awarded with average prizepool of $1,970,573 per event, which generated and average first-place prize of $439,545.

The first-ever set of brothers to win bracelets in the same year were Team Bodog's own Grant Hinkle, who won Event #2 and $831,432, with Blair winning Event #23 and $507,563.  The Hinkle's become only the second set of brothers to win bracelets at the WSOP, joining the Pearson's, Puggy (1973) and J.C. (1994).

2007 WSOP Player of the Year Tom "DonkeyBomber" Schneider has already cashed in five different events but trails Nikolay Evdakov by one. Team Bodog's Justin Bonomo has entered a total of 21 events, the same number as Amnon Filippi and Phil Ivey, but two shy of the 23 entries paid by Thomas McCormick.

There are 11 players who have all reached two final tables each, including Chris Bjorin, Andy Bloch, Alex Bolotin, Scott Clements, Jacobo Fernandez, Fu Wong, Minh Ly, Daniel Negreanu, J.C. Tran and Theo Tran. Strangely, none of those same names appear on the list of money leaders so far this year, which is headed by Team Bodog poker player Hinkle ($831,462), Phil Galfond ($817,781), Nenad Medic ($810,608), Scott Seiver ($781,866) and Duncan Bell ($666,697).

In the Team Bodog realm, poker pro David Williams has cashed three times for a total of $148,614, Bonomo has two cashes for $244,597 and Jean-Robert Bellande and Evelyn Ng have one each for $10,712 and $3,357, respectively.

As we were for the first half, we will continue reporting live from the second-half of the 2008 WSOP.