AUTHOR: Jerry "Jet" Whittaker TITLE: J.C. Tran Wins World Poker Challenge DATE: 2:34 AM ----- BODY: Since October of last year, he's cashed eight times for $2.6 million. He won
almost $700,000 of that just last night by winning the $5,000 World Poker
Tour's World Poker Challenge held at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno. Tran
outlasted 474 players to win the WPT event. This was the first major
tournament he played since finishing second in the WPT L.A. Poker Classic,
which attracted so many players (791), that second was worth $1.117 million.
He also received a $25,000 entry into the WPT championship for his win in
Reno. He leads the Card Player Magazine Player of the Year race by 656
points with 3,504. Click here to see the complete standings. The final table
of the World Poker Challenge was a tough one, with Tran, Mark Seif, Juan
Carlos Alvarado, David Pham, and John Hom. All these players have at least
$200,000 in tournaments poker winnings, but Tran has reached the poker
stratosphere with more than $4 million in lifetime winnings himself.
Alvarado finished second, winning $366,798. He started the day second in
chips with $1.1 million. Pham started the day with the chip lead, but it was
only good for a third-place finish, worth $182,260. It was his seventh cash
of the year. He now sits in the third spot on the Card Player Magazine
Player of the Year race. Seif finished fourth and earned $159,478. It was
his second cash of 2007, and the first one worth more than $20,000. Hom was
the second player to be knocked out of the final table, and for his
fifth-place finish he won $136,695. He started the table as the short stack
with $119,000 chips. And Danny Wong was the first player to leave the final
table at the World Poker Challenge, winning $113,913. It was Wong's fourth
cash of the year. --------