On a day when most poker fans had their eyes on Kristen Foxen – one of 18 players left in the World Series of Poker Main Event – a supply chain manager from Scottsdale, AZ quietly slipped from obscurity into the chip lead. Jordan Griff, a onetime PepsiCo employee who now works for Meta, is not a well-known name in professional poker, but with nine players left, he has a big lead over two of poker’s most dangerous men.
Griff’s 143 million in chips (a stack he earned in large part by spiking quads at the end of Day 7) towers above those of poker titans Brian Kim and Niklas 'Lena900' Astedt who both have more than 94 million. If Griff or anyone else feels like they can relax on tomorrow’s day off, they should know that Astedt (often considered to be the best-ever online poker player) is about as chill as he can be. Astedt recently finished competing in the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker, better known as SCOOP.
"Piece of cake,” Astedt said. “People say this is a marathon. They should try 20 tables for 40 days during SCOOP. That's what I say."
Astedt is one of two players left at the table who handicappers would give the clear edge going into the final. Kim, a high rolling American who now lives in Sydney, is the other. He's been all over the world to play and has more than $7 million in lifetime earnings, but he still admits that a WSOP Main Event final table is on his bucket list.
"I've had 30 to 38 very vivid dreams about final tabling the Main Event," Kim said. "In thirty percent of them, I'm winning, and then I'm waking up, very, very sad, and I honestly never thought I would be here."
Griff, Astedt, and Kim will join six other players from around the world on Tuesday to begin competing for the Main Event title. Here's how they will start final table play.
Final table chip stacks (by seat)
- Boris Angelov (Bulgaria) 52,900,000
- Malo Latinois (France) 25,500,000
- Brain Kim (United States) 94,600,000
- Niklas Astedt (Sweden) 94,200,000
- Joe Serock (United States) 83,600,000
- Jordan Griff (United States) 143,700,000
- Jonathan Tamayo (United States) 26,700,000
- Andres Gonzalez (Spain) 18,300,000
- Jason Sagle (Canada) 67,300,000
Day 8: The only thing that matters – until it's over
This day, the penultimate slog before the pomp and circumstance of the WSOP Main Event final table, exists in a vacuum of its own importance. Everyone who cares about today will care deeply about its slings and arrows, and by this time tomorrow, nearly everything that happened will be lost to history and trivia.
You might remember a couple penultimate table performances. Maybe Annie Duke playing while nine months pregnant rings a bell. Certainly the 2010 final table bubble all-nighter still hurts like a hangover for 10th place finisher Brandon Steven and most of the media assembled that night.
However, even if you’re a fan of the game and its heroes, there’s a pretty good chance you don’t know that every one of these people (and many others you know) busted out one table short of the final: Dewey Tomko (1986), Humberto Brenes (1987), Gabe Kaplan (1991), Todd Brunson (1992), Mori Eskandani (1993), Dan Harrington (1996), Doyle Brunson (1997) Daniel Negreanu (2001, 2015).
To put an even finer point on it: without looking it up, among the players who just made the final table this year, do you know who came the closest to making it another time?
That’s Jason 'Big Bird' Sagle, who finished 23rd in 2004 as poker was reaching the peak of its boom popularity. How famous did a 23rd place finish make Sagle? Well, he’s been around the game for a long time, but if you try to look up his name on the internet, Google will autocorrect you to actor Jason Segal from 'How I Met Your Mother.' That's how famous Sagle is as far as Google is concerned.
In short, the accomplishment of making it to Day 8 in the World Series of Poker is one a player will likely never forget and that few other people will actually remember unless that player survives until the final table.
That reality didn’t make the wins and losses in the Day 8 hours feel any less meaningful on the way to the final table. If you need one shattering example of that fact, you need only look to the fans of Kristen Foxen.
A Foxen in the Men House
Kristen Foxen is one of the top poker players in the world. She is roundly considered to be one of the nicest professional players in the game. She has earned more than $8 million in live poker tournaments. She already has four WSOP bracelets and is in the Top 200 in all-time live tournament poker earnings.
She also happens to be a woman, a fact that her talent and intelligence should render a mere asterisk on her poker profile.
Nevertheless, because poker still suffers from a dearth of female representatives, it’s been more than a quarter century since a woman made the Main Event final table. Not since Barbara Enright finished fifth in 1995 has a woman gone so deep.
Foxen’s accomplishments to this point outshine almost any other woman in the game, but that Main Event final table milestone remains elusive.
After a late Saturday night to reach the final two tables, 18 players returned at 2pm Sunday. Hector Hernandez (18th - $350,000), Jessie Bryant (17th - $450,000), and Guillermo Otero (16th - $450,000) exited with relative quickness, but from there – with the possibility of a final table so close – the pace of play and eliminations slowed.
A little more than five hours into Day 7 play, Brian Kim began his march up the leaderboard by eliminating Yegor Moroz (and his rowdy rail) from the tourney (14th - $450,000). Kim’s pair of kings bested Moroz’s pair of jacks and catapulted Kim to the top. Over the next 30 minutes, Kim opened his range and his lead over the field. With an hour to go before dinner, Kim became the first player to break the 100 million chip mark. He used the stack to pick apart at his opponents as morose Moroz fans stood behind him with a whiteboard on which they’d cheekily written “YEGOR TOUCHES the hearts of EVERYONE HE MEETS.”
As Moroz’s fans went through their various stages of grief, bad things started happening to Foxen. The slide started when she lost nearly the minimum after picking up 
out of position versus the long card-dead Diogo Coehlo’s 
.
After Foxen checked, Coelho bet the minimum on a 
flop, so Foxen stuck around. On the 
turn, Coehlo sat quietly for more than a minute after Foxen checked to him and then called a bet that was about a third of the pot. With the pot around 15 million and facing a river 
, Coelho ripped in the rest of his stack – 6.7 million. Foxen had 40 million left and didn’t think long before folding. It was a masterclass in discipline deep in a huge tournament, and anyone who had heard the leaks and spoilers coming from the Horseshoe could have believed Foxen’s day would end differently.
Those people might not have been looking closely enough at Joe Serock.
Joe Serock: Tickets to the gun show and the final table
Through most of the day, Serock’s shirt was louder than his play. Sleeveless and covered in an all-over-print of tennis players, Serock’s fit was stealing the show at the end of the table before he started his late-day climb. It began as a blind battle between Serock’s 
and Jason James’ 
, all-in pre-flop. Serock flopped an ace and queen and the board ran out clean. James exited in 14th place for $450,000.
For most of the day, Serock had seemed to be in a sort of meditative state, but the James elimination woke him up. That jolt might have been the worst thing that could have happened for Foxen.
Serock raised under the gun with and Foxen called out of the big blind with 
. Serock continued for four million on a 
flop, and Foxen called. On the turn, Serock fired six million, and that’s when everything started to change for Foxen. Watching it later, fans will likely analyze it to death, but in the moment, no one could see what was happening in Foxen’s mind. Fans only heard her say, “all-in.” Serock didn’t hesitate on the call.
Foxen turned to her rail.
“I need a ten,” she said almost apologetically before settling into the “I’m not going to watch the river” pose she used to stay alive a couple of days ago when she needed a miracle. On that day it worked. Today, it didn’t. The river bricked, the eyes of the people on Foxen’s rail changed in real time from hope to a reflection of Foxen’s despair.
Three hours earlier, she seemed destined for the final table with the talent to win it all. Instead, she finished in 13th for $600,000. During an interview with PokerGo’s Jeff Platt, Foxen paused while talking about the gratitude she had for the fan and friend support. She took off her glasses and didn’t quite wipe at her eyes.
“It was overwhelming and very, very sweet. I felt very prepared for the spot and the run. Comparing it to how I played ten years ago, I’m proud of myself,” she said.
When asked if she felt like she inspired any current or future women players, Foxen was direct.
“Don’t be afraid to sit down and play with guys,” she said.
Resetting hearts and minds for the final table
It would be disingenuous to suggest that Foxen’s exit didn’t suck a lot of air from the room. For days she had served a dual role as an ambassador of sorts. Poker fans could point to her as a symbol of how hard work and poker skill can lead a player to poker’s biggest stage. For casual watchers, she was a symbol of how nice folks can finish first.
A dinner break might have eased the sting of the moment, but in the moment most observers had lost the plot. When they returned, the new story emerged. An amateur with precious few live tournament cashes is leading the WSOP Main Event.
The action that set the final table happened quickly. Brazil's Gabriel Moura (12th , $600,000) shortstacked and needing a double, fell victim to Canadian Jason Sagle's bigger stack. Malcolm "Don't Do That Face" Franchi got it all-in with Griff with ace-queen vs ace-king and exited in 11th for $800,000. Portugal's Diogo Coelho, who laddered his way all the way to tenth place with very few hands to play all day long, bubbled the final table for $800,000 after running ace-jack into Astedt's ace-king.
With that, the final table was set. Players will have a media day on Monday and start the final table Tuesday at 1:30pm PT.
Fans lamented that Foxen didn't quite make it to the finish line. Journalists sighed and deleted the stories they’d prewritten in her honor. Foxen, for her part, held her head deservedly high as everyone else prepared to remember one important thing: in just a couple of days, Day 8 will be mostly forgotten, and the only thing that will matter is the final table of the biggest WSOP Main Event in history.
