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Now that the 2011 World Series of Poker is wrapped up, it’s time to shift focus to the conclusion next major live poker tournament: the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event. Similar to the WSOP, the PPT Main Event played down to a nine-handed final table earlier in the year (September), and built anticipation by waiting until November to decide the winner.

The final table will play down to a winner starting on November 12 in Cannes, France. Famed poker pro Sam Trickett is the current chip leader, albeit by a relatively small margin.

Trickett’s resume is certainly worth the championship title, as he dominated two separate High Roller events back in January at the 2011 edition of the Aussie Millions. Those wins totaled over $3 million, and another victory at the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event would mean an additional $1.4 million. Earning over $4.5 million in a single year in professional is a feat typically only accomplished by the absolute top finishers in the WSOP Main Event.

Trickett will face some extremely stiff competition in his battle for PPT glory, however, with intimidating names like Alexander Dovzhenko, Roger Hairabedian and Alexandre Coussy joining him on the chip leaderboard.

A full look at the final table, including chip counts, is shown below:

1: Sam Trickett - 2,605,000 chips
2: Alexandre Coussy - 2,473,000
3: Salman Behbehani - 2,446,000
4: Mads Wissing - 2,144,000
5: Mustapha Kanit – 2,047,000
6: Roger Hairabedian – 1,890,000
7: Oleksii Kovalchuk – 1,626,000
8: Ilan Boujenah – 1,241,000
9: Alexander Dovzhenko – 944,000

Even the first player eliminated from the final table is guaranteed at least 100k Euro. A prize pool worth over 4 million Euro was offered through the tournament in total.