With the 2011 World Series of Poker now in the books, many people assumed that there wouldn’t be much on the news front until next year. That would be incorrect though, as an interesting bit of news has come out about the new World Series of Poker Main Event champion, Pius Heinz. Heinz beat out the field of over 6,800 players, and won an exciting heads up match against Martin Staszko to win the gold bracelet, and also won $8.7 million for his efforts.
The news that came after the winning effort from Heinz, was that he was staked into the event. Being staked is something that commonly happens in the World Series of Poker, and the idea behind it is that people will sell a percentage of their entry into the tournament, and in return will give back a percentage of their winnings. Heinz apparently went onto an online poker site and was looking for someone to buy a part of his action into a $1,500 event, and after he made it to the final table of the event; he went back for a stake of the $10,000 Main Event. The site decided to buy a “large part” of his action, as one of the members of the site said.
Essentially what this would mean, is that whatever percentage that they bought of Heinzs’ action, he would now pay that percentage back to the site for buying him into the event (which most likely is a pretty pay day). The site has also staked three other World Series of Poker bracelet winners this year as well, so all in all, they had a nice year in terms of staking. The official numbers that were reported are 170 different players staked, and 2,915 total events that players were staked for. Overall, it made up $1 million at least of staking, which they most likely made back pretty easily from their four total bracelet winners, but mainly Heinz!