‘FPO Championship’
Level 23 (10,000/20,000/3,000)
Total Entries: 557
Players Remaining: 15
Avg. Chips: 1,144,000
Joe McKeehen was the executioner at this month’s WSOP Main Event final table and he’s now trending upwards a few spots from this FPO Championship final table.
Since these final two tables redrew, most of the pots have been tightly contested and at Table 1, a majority of those pots have been played between Joe McKeehen and Scott DiClaudio. The two are more or less polar opposites, as McKeehen is a veteran professional coming off the biggest victory of his career at the World Series of Poker Main Event and DiClaudio is a full-time Philadelphia based judge, who rarely plays tournament poker.
Despite their differences, they’ve provided most of the action over the last hour. Their most recent hand was picked up on a board of {Qd}{8s}{3s}{2h}{8d}, with The Judge facing a 170,000 chip river bet from McKeehen. The recent World Champion was staring his opponent down and DiClaudio made it very clear that he wasn’t intimidated in the slightest.
“I have people stare me down like that every day.” he joked before telling the table that he was contemplating the call with ace-high. Eventually, after a player called the clock, DiClaudio laid his hand down and while McKeehen’s stare evidently won’t be altering any of DiClaudio’s action, his play at that WSOP final table likely will.
McKeehen put together one of the more dominating performances in the November Nine era, scoring a handful of knockouts prior to the final table and on the ESPN live stream. He may not have the same type of chip lead that he did earlier this month but McKeehen remains one of the best closers in the game and will be a serious threat if he’s able to pick up a sizable stack.