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| Nolan Dalla's Report | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| It’s very likely that Todd ‘Dan Druff’ Witteles owns a World Series of Poker record which may never be broken. To date, Witteles has played in exactly two WSOP events in his lifetime. He took 3rd place in his first tournament ever (Event #4). Then, he won his second tournament – the $3,000 buy-in Limit Hold’em championship. No other player in WSOP history has finished so high (1st and 3rd) in their first two tournaments. This is not what one would expect from a player who goes by the nickname ‘Dan Druff.’ Playing with a bottle of Head and Shoulders (hair shampoo) on the poker table which was used as a card protector, Witteles lathered up second in chips at the start and rinsed away his opponents in the final stages of the tournament. It took Witteles eight hours to rake in the final pot of the night and contain a late rally by the runner up, Daryl Mixan. Witteles, a professional poker player from Las Vegas, plays mostly on the Internet. He is well-known in online poker circles, but is virtually anonymous inside cardrooms and at poker tournaments (at least until now – winning a gold bracelet tends to change everything). “I wanted to pick a screen name that was funny,” Witteles explained when asked about his pesky nickname. “When I play live – I decided to use this bottle of shampoo to throw off my opponents. “I even washed my hair with this bottle twice. So, it worked!” . Most interesting is that fact that Witteles has earned nearly half a million dollars in Limit Hold’em, rather than the far more popular No-Limit game. “In limit poker, the cost of making a mistake is not nearly as high,” Witteles said. “If I make a mistake in Limit Hold’em it costs me a few bets. But if I make the same mistake in No-Limit I can lose my whole stack. That’s why I prefer Limit Hold’em.” It’s hard to argue with success. The $3,000 buy-in Limit Hold’em championship attracted 406 entries. The prize pool was $1,120,560. After 397 players were eliminated on the first two days, the nine finalists arrived at the final table. Two former gold bracelet winners played in the finale – Eddy Scharf (with two titles) and Cyndy Violette (with one title). The chip leader was Kieu Duong (with 310,000). Todd Witteles was second in chips (with 211,000). Tood Witteles is a 33-year-old former software engineer. He holds a M.S. degree in computer science. Next time ‘Dan Druff’ enters a poker tournament, his expectations will be high. After winning $115,800 in his first tournament and $347,385 in his second, Witteles can’t possibly improve his final table percentages or increase his financial return on investment. Then again, with the main event of the 2005 World Series of Poker scheduled to begin in just two days, Witteles will be shooting for the biggest trifecta in poker history. If he brings his bottle of Head and Shoulders to the table, look out  Official Report by Nolan
Dalla – World Series of Poker Media Director |
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