Meet the Six Finalists in the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Finale

Seat 1.  Tim West  –  1,995,000  (67 bb)

Tim West scored a big double up just before the field reached the final table of ten to vault his stack close to 2 million. He enters the final table in third chip-position. West will mark double-digit WPT cashes with his score tonight, and he will also increase his WPT earnings of $249,395. This is his second WPT final table; West took third at the WPT Celebrity Invitational back in Season V.

West is from Los Altos, California, and you can usually hear him on the tournament floor talking about his beloved Bay Area pro sports teams. The 31-year-old has $3,519,581 in career earnings, with an impressive 125 cashes at various poker tournaments. His biggest cash of $444,165 came when West won a $5,000 no-limit hold’em event at the DeepStack Extravaganza III at the Venetian in Las Vegas in 2012.

“It feels fantastic, it feels absolutely amazing, I’m elated just to be here, just to be breathing, so to be winning and doing something successful and fun at the same time, it’s just incredible,” said West about making the final table.

He scored a huge double on Day 3, and he walked us through his thought process for that hand. “I just didn’t want to be blown off my hand. I had an ace and a king, and I figure if I move all in the worst hand that can call me is probably two queens or kings, because they know what I have most of the time, and I wanted to put it on them. I didn’t want to be put to the test and have to put more money in with A-K. I wanted to put them to the test,” said West.

Seat 2.  Jason Koon  –  1,030,000  (34 bb)

Jason Koon enters the final table tonight as the short stack. Koon has 11 cashes at various WPT events, including a fourth-place finish at the Alpha8 event in St. Kitts that was good for $298,760. He made his first WPT final table on the Main Tour at the Festa al Lago back in Season VIII. It was another fourth-place finish that established the foundation of his $685,075 in WPT earnings.

Koon hails from Weston, West Virginia, and his overall career tournament earnings stand at $8,491,112. His largest cash came a few months ago in January, when Koon won the $100,000 buy-in PokerStars Championship Super High Roller event in the Bahamas.

When asked about his run to the final table on Day 3, Koon shared these thoughts: “I came in as one of the shortest stacks for sure. I went on a crazy run, and I was second or third in chips at the final table. Lost a big flip relative to my stack, but I bagged over 30 big blinds so there’s hope. It was swingy, but deep in tournaments it always is you know.”

“I love these stops. I don’t play as many WPTs anymore. I was sad to bubble Five Diamond the way that I did, and it’s good to come down here and make another run,” said Koon about being back at a WPT final table. He wants to win this WPT title so he can get a seat in the Monster WPT Tournament of Champions among other reasons. “I would love to do that. One, to say I did it, and two to get to play this $15k in a couple days,” said Koon.

Seat 3.  Ryan Riess  –  3,090,000  (103 bb)

Ryan Riess enters the final table in second chip-position, and the East Lansing, Michigan resident had a really strong Day 3 in the tournament. “Yesterday was a really smooth day. I didn’t get out of line at all, all my bluffs were really small and they all seemed to work. Everything was just going my way, and hopefully we can continue it today,” said Riess about his run during Day 2 of this event, and it was more of the same down the home stretch to the final table.

The 26 year-old won the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2013, and took home $8,361,570 in prize money. His career earnings stand at $9,318,956. Riess has cashed eight times at WPT events for $140,818, and no matter where he finishes at this final table, he will score his largest WPT cash tonight. If he takes third or better this will be the second-largest cash of the former World Champion’s career.

Seat 4.  Cliff Josephy  –  1,855,000  (62 bb)

Cliff Josephy won one of the biggest hands on Day 3 of the tournament when he eliminated both Kunal Patel (13th) and Yevgeniy Timoshenko (12th) on the same hand. He enters the final table in fourth chip-position. Josephy has eight cashes at WPT events, and has won $409,550 on the tour.

Josephy is from Syosset, New York and the 51-year-old has $6,661,350 in career earnings. He scored the largest cash of his career last summer in Las Vegas, when he took third place in the WSOP Main Event, good for $3,453,035 in prize money. His previous best cash at a WPT event was the $146,460 he took home for busting in 12th place at the WPT World Championship back in Season IV.

Seat 5.  Terry Schumacher  –  1,385,000  (46 bb)

Terry Schumacher enters the final table in fifth chip-position, and the Belgian poker player will book his third WPT cash at his first WPT final table. He took ninth place at partypoker.net WPT Montreal last November, and cashed in 15th place closer to home at the WPT National Brussels stop in 2014. This is the first WPT event he has played in the United States.

“I was always in good shape, because I was almost every time the biggest stack at my table, and I could just play a lot wider, and people almost never played back at me. I just kept on grinding little by little,” said Schumacher when he was asked about his journey through the tournament on Day 3.

Schumacher has 15 career cashes to his credit for $205,254 in earnings, but the majority of them have come at international events, with his handful of stateside cashes coming in Las Vegas. But it sounds like Schumacher is ready to broaden his horizons in terms of traveling to tournaments as he changes focus from online to live poker. “I’ve only played in Vegas before this trip. I started to play live seriously six months ago; I used to play online only. This is pretty nice. The dealers are fast and good, and the atmosphere is nice and fun. It’s a good thing,” said Schumacher.

Seat 6.  Alan Sternberg  –  4,605,000  (154 bb)

Alan Sternberg was the chip leader at the start of Day 3, and he will also be the chip leader at the final table. He eliminated multiple opponents during the play-down stretch to the final table on Day 3.

The WPT Champions Club member hails from North Bellmore, New York, and he decided to come down here to Florida primarily for the Monster WPT Tournament of Champions. “What brought me down here was the $15k, with the $100k added and no rake. That’s what drew me down here, and since I was down here I played this,” said Sternberg.

Sternberg has $1,195,668 in career earnings, and the bulk of that total is attributed to the $1,076,167 he took home as the champion of the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star during Season VIII.