World Series of Poker November Nine profile: Saguhyon “Joseph” Cheong

In this series I will take a look at the backgrounds and resumes’ of the nine poker players who managed to weave their way through, and outlast 7,310 opponents, and make it to the final table of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event.

The final table for the 2010 WSOP will reconvene on November 9^th  where the remaining nine players will play down to just two, who will then return the following day, November 10^th, to declare the 2010 WSOP Champion.

The nine remaining players are:

1. Jonathan Duhamel - 65,975,000 chips
2. John Dolan - 46,250,000 chips
3. Joseph Cheong - 23,525,000 chips
4. John Racener - 19,050,000 chips
5. Matthew Jarvis - 16,700,000 chips
6. Fillipo Candio - 16,400,000 chips
7. Mike Mizrachi - 14,450,000 chips
8. Soi Nguyen - 9,650,000 chips
9. Jason Senti - 7,625,000 chips

In this profile I’ll look at the man heading into the final table with the third largest chip-stack, Joseph Cheong. Cheong has the perfect educational background for a professional poker player, holding a B.S. in Psychology, and a joint B.A in Math and Economics -it’s almost as if he chose his Majors with the intention of becoming a professional poker player!

In a little over a year of competing in live poker tournaments Cheong has pocketed a respectable $74,779 -not to mention the minimum $800K+ for making the final table! Cheong has cashed in the NAPT $5,000 buy-in Deepstacks Extravaganza at the Venetian -finishing in 36^th place for $16,071-as well as winning a $300 NLHE event at the WSOP Circuit Series in San Diego, which was his biggest cash to date at $17,541.

Cheong also made the money in two events at the 2010 World Series of Poker; finishing 24^th in the $1,500 6-Max NLHE tournament, and 29^th in the $5,000 6-Max NLHE tournament.

Cheong’s demeanor and ability to stage comeback after comeback during the run-up to the WSOP Final Table has made him one of the odds on favorites to win the 2010 WSOP Main Event. He was able to keep his composure and overcome bad-beats, and not only survive a tremendous bad beat at the hands of Fillipo Candio, but managed to build his stack back up.

Cheong wore the Full Tilt Poker badge throughout the Main Event and during the November Nine picture -7 of the 9 wore Full Tilt logos with just Jason Senti and chip-leader Jonathan Duhamel sporting PokerStars badges– but with only three sponsorships to each online poker site the Full Tilt brass has some tough decisions to make, and Cheong could end up the odd man out -in which case he’ll likely end up at PokerStars or even Ultimate Bet Poker.