The Mirage Poker Showdown tournament of the World Poker Tour

Throughout its history, the World Poker Tour has been known to feature the best poker tournaments all over the world. After a successful first two seasons, the event added another excellent tournament during its third season in the form of the Mirage Poker Showdown. This tournament has been a regularly featured tournament in the event ever since.

The Mirage Poker Showdown had a total of 281 poker participants that will mark more wonderful and successful years to come. This tournament serves as a qualifier for the WPT World Championships. The winners at the Mirage will assure themselves seats at the prestigious grand finale of the tour. This tournament is held at the world class Mirage casino hotel at the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada.

The debut year of this tournament took place in 2004 which saw poker greats Scott Nguyen, Lee Watkinson, Eli Elezra, Jim Meehan, John Juanda and Gabe Kaplan reaching the final table. In the end, Watkinson emerged as the runner-up while Elezra was declared the ultimate winner of the contest, bringing home the grand prize amounting to $1,024,574. The success of this initial year guaranteed the tournament a spot in the World Poker Tour for more years to come.

In the World Poker Tour 2005, those who made it to the final table are Mark Ellerbe, Eugene Todd, Christopher Bell, Ted Forrest, Gavin Smith and Thang Pham. This fourth season of the tour saw this tournament established itself as one of the premiere contests in poker. It led to another classic finish where Smith emerged victorious over Forrest in the end. In this particular tournament, Smith took home the grand pot which is valued at $1,128,278.

The World Poker Tour 2006 marked the fifth season of the tour. Like the previous seasons, the tour continued to showcase the best tournaments it can offer to the world including the Mirage Poker Showdown. This year, the tournament featured Robert Mizrachi, Steve Frederick, Stanley Weiss, Harry Demetriou, David Williams and Devin Porter at the final table. The final results showed Weiss victorious over Demetriou. Weiss took home a grand total amounting to $1,294,755. This event game him a seat to the prestigious WPT World Championship of that season.

In the sixth season of the tour, the World Poker Tour 2007 started with this tournament at the Mirage. This tournament has served as an excellent jump point for yet another successful year for the tour. The final table included Amnon Filippi, Jonathan Little, Cory Carroll, Phil Ivey, Richard Kirsch and Darrell Dicken. The final moments of the tournament saw Little emerging as the winner and Carroll as a runner-up.