Atlanta pro David "The Magnificent" Woo (30) has joined the ranks of 32 other players celebrating their first 39th World Series of Poker winner bracelets in Las Vegas this week after taking down Event 39 - the $1 500 buy-in No-Limit Hold'em championship.
Woo's victory after 40 hands of heads up play against Matthew Wood earned him the $631 656 main prize in an event that saw a massive 2 720 entries - the second-highest turnout for this year. By the end of Day 1 only 218 survived, an indication of the fast action that characterised the event. The field included Barry Greenstein, Hugo Brenes and Michael Glasser.
Going into the final table Woo was about halfway down the chip counts and some 500 000 chips behind Thom
Werthmann in the lead. Other final tablers included Thanh Dat Tran, Curtis Early, Matt Wood, Habib Khanis, Eric Beren, Jim Paras and Michael Glasser.
With skilled play and some good fortune Woo overtook his opponents to take a commanding 1.9 million chip lead by the time he faced Wood in the heads up, and he continued to control the final game, eventually eliminating Wood for a second placing prize of $389 844.
For Woo, a former coffee shop owner before becoming a full time poker player five years ago, it was a notable victory as his first WSOP bracelet. The Atlanta player now has four career WSOP cashes, including one in the 2006 Main Event.
World Series of Poker management released new record information at the end of Event 39, showing that a total of over 12 000 individual players have now cashed in the 39-year history of the World Series of Poker, with 117 of them winning more than a million dollars.
