Final Table Preview

The two biggest questions I'm thinking about are

1) Who is most likely to win?

and

2) Who do we (professional poker players) want to win?

Everything I know right now is based on reports from pokernews.com and Jeremiah at pokerwire, so I have pretty limited info on these guys. I've read up what I can and will make some guesses based on what I do know.

1) I think is probably Lam. Bodog has Hilm at 14/5 with Lam and Watkinson at 7/2. It seems Hilm is the most loose-aggressive player left in the tournament, the obligatory Scandinavian LAG. He made a terrible call to double Kravchenko with ten left and a couple other shady plays, so I can't pick him. I haven't seen anything stupid from Lam at all. It seems he's accumulated very steadily playing mostly small pots, and has rarely been in danger during the tournament. He's a pro who seems to have excellent balance.

Watkinson is certainly the most accomplished player, but has half the chips of Lam, Hilm, and Kalmar. Childs seems very solid and could win it. I mean, any of these guys could win it.

2) Is kind of hard to judge for sure right now, but it looks like Khan might be best. He's extremely enthusiastic and doesn't shy away from attention. He definitely seems like he would love to be poker's ambassador for the next year. Most of the other guys appear, on the surface, to be some combination of quiet/stoic/boring.

Prediction:

9) Yang

8) Kravchenko

7) Hilm

6) Kalmar

5) Watkinson

4) Childs

3) Rahme

2) Lam

1) Khan