Mike Vela Gets First WPT Win at the Foxwoods

November 14, 2007

Many players showed up for the WPT 2007 World Poker Finals at Foxwoods this past week. Although there was a wide variety of players to start with, only six sat down at the final table. Those six included the defending champion Nenad Medic, Mark Weitzman, a pro player who has made it to six WSOP final tables and Tom Dwan, who is considered to be one of the top online players.

Also playing at the final table was Nick Schulman. He had won the event two years ago and is one of the best young poker players out there. The odd man out as far as poker experience was Mike Vela, who is a senior VP at an investment company, but he is not the odd man out anymore as he not only managed to hold his own but outlasted them all to win the title.

It was the online player Dwan that entered as the chip leader but that didn’t last long as both Schulman and Medic won big pots against him early. It was Medic that took out Weitzman in 6th place and look to be a serious contender for this year’s title as well.

It was Vela’s table though as the rest of the field pounded on each other, Vela steadily built a huge chip lead. Vela won a huge hand against White in a battle of the blinds and a few hands later eliminated White in 5th place.

He wasn’t done there as Dwan was next to exit in 4th place and again it was Vela who handed him the defeat. Medic was next to take on the huge stack of Vela and he too fell, being eliminated in 3rd.

Heads up play commenced as Vela had close to a 3-1 chip lead over Nick Schulman. It didn’t take long for Schulman to make a stand as he went all in with pocket 5’s and was called by Vela’s AQ. Vela hit his ace and the tournament was over. Mike Vela was this years World Poker Finals champion and took home over $1.7 million dollars.