WSOP: And The Winner Is....

The Final (Final) Table at the 2012 World Series of Poker (WSOP) started off with Hall of Fame inductions of Barry Greenstein�and�Linda Johnson�late yesterday afternoon.

After the ceremony and speeches, the WSOP and ESPN staffs incited the crowd to show a little excitement for the TV cameras. Although it was an easy feat, WSOP organizers brought out what may have been the most uncoordinated cheerleaders we've ever seen. For the second day in a row, they also brought out girls shooting t-shirts into the crowd, but that didn't seem to do much. Had the organizers just hung around the hallway, they would have known that everyone in green (about half the audience) was not sober and would have made all the noise they wanted.

The last bit of low-budget stage production for the night were some faux fireworks that looked like they were brought in from the Arena Football League.

The crowd was, clearly, rooting for Las Vegas resident Ben Lamb who was introduced third among the final three despite having the second most chips.�After introductions, Ben Lamb and Martin Staszko both went all in on the first hand dealt. Staszko won the pot crippling Ben Lamb's chip count. This was already more action than we saw all day Sunday. In fact, we were standing and almost breathless during and after that first hand. Whew, what a start for an event that we didn't expect much excitement from.

The action started quickly as Staszko went from 3rd to 1st place in the first two hands of the day. On the fourth hand, Ben Lamb went all in against Staszko with his tiny chip stack and was knocked out. While finishing third, Lamb still won $4 million.

Now head to head, chip leader Staszko and Pius Heinz were physically separated by $8 million in cold hard cash. After the exhausting beginning, things slowed down to the snail's pace we expected for hours on end before 22-year-old Pius Heinz of Cologne, Germany finally took the bracelet for WSOP Champion 2012.

While congratulations are in order for Heinz, who became the third richest WSOP winner, we found seven hours of raise and fold poker to be�excruciatingly boring. Read more about Heinz's WSOP championship on WSOP.com�and get ready for WSOP 2012.

[Photo: Poker Stars Blog]

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