The World Poker Tour answered the bell this week, packing 9,876 entries into over four starting flights in the Prime Championship at Wynn Las Vegas. An overgrown turnout wasn't its biggest ever, that came in 2023 with over 10,500, but it was a proper response to the competitive gauntlet thrown down by WSOP Paradise in The Bahamas.
Now that field of 9,876 entries is down to its final six after almost 40 full levels of play. All six of them are guaranteed at least a quarter-million dollars, but only one of them will win the $1.1 million dollar grand prize. The potential champs range from Aaron Johnson, a seasoned poker veteran from Minnesota, to the upstart Luis Fernando Martin Del Campo of Mexico. Also in the running is Safiya Umerova, the only woman left at the final table and gold bracelet winner of the 2016 WSOP Shootout. They're hoping to catch the chip leader, Qing Liu, who jumped above $4M in earnings with the locked-in prize of $250,000 for sixth place.
Joining them will be Tim Burden and Uri Foox, two mid-stakes players with six-figure resumes of their own who are hunting for their first major victory. Let's meet the final six:
Can they catch Liu?
Seat 1: Uri Foox - 48,900,000 (24bb)
- Career earnings: $396,419
The career earnings figure for Uri Foox includes his already-earned $250,000 for making this final table, which beats Foox's previous best finish from way back in 2010 when he won a deepstack at the Venetian for $45K. Otherwise, The Minneapolis resident has mostly put together a consistent string of finishes at Canterbury Park in Minnesota for the past several years. Before this week, it all added up to just over $146K. After this week it could be above $1,000,000, but something tells us Foox will be back to play in his regular tournaments at Canterbury Park no matter what happens here.
Seat 2: Qing Liu - 126,600,000 (63bb)
- Career earnings: $4,062,900
Qing Liu has the chip lead and he's the most accomplished player at the final table with over $4M in earnings. A lot of that comes from a win at the WPT Venetian Main Event in 2021, where he took home $752K and a lifetime ticket to the WPT Champions Club. Liu is something of a fixture at the Venetian, where he can be seen running deep in the daily deepstack tournaments throughout the year. This will be Liu's second six-figure score of 2025 after a win in a $600 event at the Wynn Summer Classic this summer.
Seat 3: Fernando Martin Del Campo - 85,500,000 (43bb)
- Career earnings: $277,945
Like Foox, Del Campo's career earnings include the $250K he's locked up for the WPT Prime final table appearance. Before Prime, that total was only $22,945, and $2,238 of that came just last week with a 147th-place finish in the WPT's $1,600 Mystery Bounty. Though he has made a name for himself online and a pro player and trainer, the native Mexican is relatively untested on the live tournament stage. This could be one of many major appearances for Del Campo.
Seat 4: Tim Burden - 49,500,000 (25bb)
- Career earnings: $844,689
This will be Tim Burden's new high score, though he's a regular at mid-stake tours throughout the country like the WSOP Circuit and Run Good. Burden has a lot of impressive finishes and several final tables at this buy-in level, so he counts among the most experienced with the specific nature of WPT Prime. He's a champion on the Mid-Stakes Poker Tour (Now the Major Series of Poker) and a WSOP Circuit Main Event final tablist, but this is his first six-figure win with the potential for a lot more.
Seat 5: Safiya Umerova - 18,800,000 (9bb)
- Career earnings: $1,031,793
Safiya Umerova won the WSOP Shootout in 2016, and that remains her best finish at $264K. She can top that with just one pay jump on Friday, and add to a poker resume that has now passed the $1 million mark. Umerova previously hit the payout window in this year's WSOP Main Event, finish 286th, and she picked up a couple of cashes at the Legends of Poker in LA, where she is regularly seen, before coming to Vegas for the WPT Prime Championship.
Seat 6: Aaron Johnson - 65,900,000 (33bb)
- Career earnings: $2,877,030
Aaron Johnson is running hot. Very hot. He came to Las Vegas on the heels of a win in the MSPT Main Event in Chicago, where he grabbed $92,000 for first. That was just a few weeks after a trip to Riverside, Iowa, where he finished second in that MSPT Main Event for $70,993. Johnson has won two MSPT Main Events with 13 top tens and 66 cashes, making tournaments like this second nature for him. He's a mid-stack, but Johnson may be the favorite.
Everyone comes back on Friday, December 19 for a televised final table with just a few minutes left in Level 40. Blinds continue at 1,000,000/2,000,000/2,000,000 and they'll play down to a winner at Wynn Las Vegas.
Images courtesy of Rachel Kay Miller/World Poker Tour.
Data courtesy of The Hendon Mob.
