Mike Sexton is best known as being the voice of the World Poker Tour, considering the Poker Hall of Famer has been handling the commentary duties alongside Vince Van Patten since the tour’s inception back in 2002, but today the Party Poker spokesmen has a chance at booking his first WPT victory as he enters the final table of the WPT Venice Main Event third in chips.

This will be Sexton’s second WPT final table –when he finished in 6th place at the 2011 Bay 101 Shooting Stars Main Event the commentary duties were handled by Van Patten and Tony Dunst—but this time around he is in a much better position to have a shot at the title, sitting on a chip-stack of just over 1 million chips with the blinds 10,000/20,000 with a 3,000 chip ante.

Sexton nearly had some well-known company at the final table, with poker hostess and Team Party Poker member Kara Scott finishing the tournament in 13th place, 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event runner-up Martin Staszko finishing in 10th place, and 2012 WPT Rendevouz de Paris winner Matt Salsberg finishing as the final table bubble boy in 7th place.

Joining Sexton at the final table will be up-and-coming poker pro Rocco Palumbo. Palumbo is a WSOP bracelet winner –picking up the ultimate tournament-poker-measuring-stick at last year’s WSOP—and should have the support of his fellow Italians at Saturday’s final table. Palumbo has only been playing live events for roughly four years at this point and should surpass the $1 million mark in career tournament earnings on Saturday.

The tournament is one of the smaller WPT events in the tour’s 11-year history, attracting just 173 players to the $3,500 buy-in event, likely due to the absurd number of events taking place around the globe right now as well as the event not being an official WPT tournament –which means it won’t be aired on TV and doesn’t count as an official WPT event.

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Here is a look at the official seating assignments and chip-counts for Saturday’s final table at the WPT Venice Grand Prix Main Event:

* Seat 1 – Xia Lin – 309,000

* Seat 2 – Rocco Palumbo – 406,000

* Seat 3 – Mike Sexton – 1,079,000

* Seat 4 – Erion Islamay – 406,000

* Seat 5 – Marcello Montagner – 1,805,000

* Seat 6 – Robert Begni – 1,203,000

And here is a look at the final table payouts for the tournament:

* 1st place: $180,097

* 2nd place: $108,316

* 3rd place: $69,723

* 4th place: $51,585

* 5th place: $38,721

* 6th place: $31,002

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 30th, 2013 at 8:59 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.