2010 WSOP: Phil Ivey Leads Fan Votes In All-Star Tournament of Champions

The 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions is the very first fan-voted event in the history of the WSOP, and perhaps in the history of poker. Look at it as the all-star game of poker. 355,081 votes were cast online through WSOP.com from March 15 to June 15, and the top 20 players would be included in the Tournament of Champions along with previous TOC Champions, the 2009 WSOP Main Event Champ, 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event Champ, the WSOP Academy Playoff Winner and the WSOP.COM UK Qualifier.

The tournament of champions was started by the WSOP in 2004 and was an invitational for the top ten names in poker in a winner-take-all competition. The first winner was Annie Duke.

In 2005, the Tournament of Champions was expanded to 114 players, all of whom were WSOP gold bracelet winners. Mike Matusow was the champion of that event, while 9 others were also paid.

In 2006, 27 of the most accomplished WSOP poker players were invited to play with final table players walking away with prizes. The champion then was 2009 Poker Hall of Fame inductee Mike Sexton.

This year, the WSOP decided to make the entrants voted in to the $1 Million Guaranteed pot. First place would win $500,000 while the runner-up would win $250,000, third place would win $100,000 and fourth through ninth would each earn $25,000.

After the votes, the biggest vote-getter was Phil Ivey, who just beat runner-up Daniel Negreanu by a margin of 28 votes from all 355,081 votes cast. The qualified players for the 2010 Tournament of Champions by rank in votes are:

1. Phil Ivey - 16,267
2. Daniel Negreanu - 16,239
3. Doyle Brunson - 13,796
4. Phil Hellmuth - 12,673
5. Chris Ferguson - 11,585
6. Allen Cunningham -10,486
7. Johnny Chan - 10,434
8. Scotty Nguyen - 9,834
9. Barry Greenstein - 9,806
10. John Juanda - 8,835
11. Erik Seidel - 8,802
12. Jennifer Harman - 8,206
13. Huck Seed - 8,180
14. Dan Harrington - 7,342
15. TJ Cloutier - 6,281
16. Sammy Farha - 6,085
17. Howard Lederer - 5,596
18. Greg Raymer - 5,404
19. Joe Hachem - 5,272
20. Antonio Esfandiari - 5,129

Entries are automatically given to 2004 TOC Champion Annie Duke, 2005 TOC Champion Mike Matusow, 2006 TOC Champion Mike Sexton, 2008 WSOP Main Event Champ Joe Cada, 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event Champ Barry Shulman, WSOP Academy Playoff Winner Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier, and WSOP.COM UK Qualifer Andrew Barton.

Should any of the 20 cannot play, then the next highest vote-getter would be eligible to play.

Personally, I'm hoping for John Juanda to win it. He's just been having a more successful run than most throughout the 2010 WSOP.