Josh Hale WIns World Poker Tour Legends of Poker

Friday August 31,2012 : HALE TRIUMPHS IN WPT LEGENDS OF POKER
 
Half a million pay day for US pro
 
US poker pro Josh Hale scored his biggest ever live tournament pay day this week when he took down the World Poker Tour Legends of Poker after five days of hard competition against 622 rivals at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles.
 
Significantly outstripping his fifth place win of $35,000 in the same tournament last year, Hale this time claimed $500,000 and a seat in the 2013 WPT World Championship.
 
Going into the final table, Hale held an impressive chip lead of 7,325,000 on nearest opponent Greg Mueller who had over a three and a half million on the table. Other contestants on the quality final table were Max Steinberg, Jeff Madsen, Raouf Malek and Ali Eslami.
 
Hale led the action for much of the game, but on the run-up toward the heads up he lost it to Max Steinberg, eventually finding himself in the final confrontation a seemingly hopeless 10 million chips behind the leader.
 
Fighting on regardless, Hale managed to rebuild his fortunes, with the turning point a massive double up, taking a huge five million chip pot and the indisputable 2 to 1 lead, which he leveraged into a win around hand 145.
 
Steinberg's very credible performance earned him the second placing prize of $293,490.