<img align="right" src=http://www.liquidpoker.net/staff/Pindarots/09/jamesakenhead.jpg style="margin:5px; border: 1px solid black;">In little less than 1 month time we'll know who will be crowned the new No-Limit Hold'em World Champion as the final table of the World Series of Poker Main Event is coming closer. As we did last year, we want to give you a preview of this final table by introducing all 9 players to you before it all starts. We'll start with the shortest stack today, James Akenhead and will end with the chipleader, Darvin Moon. The players will start with 120k/240k blinds with 30k ante.
These are the seatings like they will be when they start at November 7th: Seat 1: Darvin Moon - 58,930,000
Seat 2: James Akenhead - 6,800,000
Seat 3: Phil Ivey - 9,765,000
Seat 4: Kevin Schaffel - 12,390,000
Seat 5: Steven Begleiter - 29,885,000
Seat 6: Eric Buchman - 34,800,000
Seat 7: Joe Cada - 13,215,000
Seat 8: Antoine Saout - 9,500,000
Seat 9: Jeff Shulman - 19,580,000 James "Mokka" Akenhead's was born in 1983 born in London. Both his parents were teachers, but Akenhead didn't follow their footsteps. Instead he dropped out of school because he was too lazy, a move he still regrets. He got to work for the railways and became the youngest train driver in England. In the meantime he started playing poker, and at some point he decided that there was more money to be made on the pokertable. He quit his job in 2006 and he played tournaments ranging from $100 to $1000 buy-in.
He cashed a few times in these smaller events and won a couple of side-events. This earned him a decent pay in the first 2 years, but his big breakthrough came in 2008, when he played the $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em event at the World Series of Poker. He managed to make it to the final table and even managed to end heads-up for the bracelet against Grant Hinkle. While Hinkle started with a big chiplead, Akenhead fought back and managed to get almost even in stacks when a cruc<A name="cutnews"></A>ial hand happened. With over 30 big blinds he managed to get it all-in preflop with   against Hinkles   . A sick    flop and the  on the turn ended his dreams of winning the bracelet.
However, it wasn't his only shot at a bracelet. He later cashed in the World Series of Poker Europe event 1 as he finished 39th, and this year he even managed to make it to the final table of the Main Event of the WSOPE. Unfortunately for him, a 9th place was all he could do, so a double Main Event-title will have to wait a little longer. Thus far he's earned himself $800,127 in tournament winnings before this Main Event, and he'll add at least $1,263,602 to that in November.
Akenhead's last day in the Main Event before the final table was a pretty rough one. He started the day with little over 8 million chips, but arrived 5 minutes late and within 15 minutes he lost a big part of his stack when he had KK against AA. He fought back and got his stack up to 12 million, before he got crippled once again, doubling up Antoine Saout with AK failing to hit against the 88 of Saout. Doubling up with KQ against AA, and later winning a few smaller pots, he ended the day with 6.8 million chips, which is what he'll bring to this final table. Winning this is a long shot as his stack is the shortest and his odds of winning this are estimated at 22:1. While he does have position on the chipleader, he's got Phil Ivey on his immediate left...
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Sweden. Oct 12 2009 11:03. Posts 4472
