2010 WSOP Main Event Goes to Quincy, Illinois

View WSOP Main Event Winners and Centerpoint in a larger map

The secret? Statistics like tournament results, overall poker skills and number of cashes aren't actually the key to picking the next winner - it's geography.  And we've located the heart of poker, in Quincy, Illinois.

How'd we do it? By comparing the birthplaces of all previous WSOP Main event winners, we've simply found the epicentre of global poker.

As you can see on the map above, there's a midpoint around which the winners are evenly spread out, with the majority in the U.S. and some in the rest of the world.

When you look at it closer, you can see they're gravitating towards a center, a magnetic poker pole if you will. This made us think that, even though it sounds strange, geography is somehow affecting the results in the WSOP.

And in Quincy, the poker seismograph peaks. So if our suspicions are true, that is where we most likely will find the 2010 WSOP champion.

At first we thought we had made a mistake. We had accurately pinpointed the geographical center point of all World Series of Poker Main Event winners - that we knew - but could the next WSOP champion really live in Quincy, Illinois?

We'd never heard of the city before and Illinois hasn't spawned a single Main Event champion.

However, when we read the first two lines on Quincy's Wikipedia page we realized we might have found the right place after all. The city itself was built on poker.

"The community is a river city and was built on top of the bluffs," and, as every poker player knows, to win the World Series of Poker you surely need to be friends with the river and on top of the bluffs.

When we dug a little deeper all our doubts were smashed to pieces. Dennis Phillips, who finished 3rd in 2008 and 45th in 2009, was actually born in Quincy and grew up on a dairy farm in Clayton, just outside the city. That can't be a coincidence.

When you think about what an unlikely poker star Phillips is, you realize that he must have received some sort of help at the table. Luck is just not enough.

He started playing poker, as a hobby, in 2004, and since then he has reached two Main Event final tables and cashed in a number of other tournaments.

Although there are thousands of superior poker players out there, very few can compete with Phillips' results. The reason must be his geographical edge.

Ron Amos: The 2010 WSOP Champion?

Even though most signs point towards Dennis Phillips to win the 2010 WSOP Main Event, we think that he has used up his fair share of geo-karma already.

Instead, here is our pick: A man named Ron Amos will reap the benefits of being from Quincy, Illinois. In the 2009 Main Event Amos finished in 344th place and won close to $30,000. However, if our predictions are correct, and we really think they are, chances are that he will win a lot more than that this year. The geographical odds say that he will go all the way.

Ron, if you're reading this, please contact us at info@pokerjunkie.com or drop us a line on our Facebook page. We would love to follow your journey to the final table.

If there are any players from the Quincy region who have planned to go to Las Vegas this summer to participate in the WSOP Main Event, or perhaps any one the smaller tournaments, please contact us and we will assist you in any way we can.

Quincy is, we're certain, the next poker capital of the world. Now we just need to produce some results to prove it.

 

Update: Rom Amos rules! Read our exclusive interview with Ron Amos here!