Goldkind defeats field of 2,302

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Clifford Goldkind defeated the second-largest field to date at the 2012 World Series of Poker to win his first WSOP bracelet and $559,514 in the $1,500 no-limit hold 'em Event 19. The 24-year-old student from Potomac, Md., is set to begin his masters program at Tufts University in a few months, and now has all the spending money a student could hope for. However, his focus throughout the event wasn't on the money; rather, with a background in economics and game theory, it was all about making the right decisions.

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WSOP.comStudent Clifford Goldkind defeated a field of 2,302 to win his first career WSOP bracelet.

"I don't really care about just making the money," he said. "I didn't actually know the payouts. I never looked at the payouts. I know what it is now. I haven't seen them on paper even. That helps because you're just thinking about playing right and moving up in places. I'm not thinking about dollar signs in my head. I'm just playing."

The focus Goldkind displayed at the felt carried him through the massive field and enabled him to defeat the final table in less than four hours. This was his fourth WSOP event and first WSOP cash.

"You have to win some important spots to get through a huge field," he said. "I felt like I played well."

Goldkind isn't a poker pro, but he has put in some time at the tables. During the time between his college graduation from Washington University and his entrance in the Israeli military, Goldkind played poker to support his income. After he completed his tenure in Israel earlier this year, he returned to the U.S., hit the tables and made his first WSOP Circuit final table in May. Despite his success, Goldkind views poker as a hobby moving forward.

"I'd like to keep playing poker," said Goldkind. "I'm going to play more tournaments; I want to work that into my life. But there are other things I want to do as my career. … I would like to start my own kind of private equity firm, with the notion that it invests in development projects in third-world projects. If I had a dream job, that'd be it."

The final table included 2009 WSOP Europe main event champion Barry Shulman and tournament regular David Peters. Shulman was eliminated by Goldkind in eighth place, moving all-in with Qc-8c and ran into Goldkind's aces. Peters followed him out the door in seventh. Peters finished second in the $1,000 no-limit hold 'em event in 2010. It was his 10th career WSOP cash.

Other notable finishers include Amir Lehavot (26th), Alex Jacob (27th) and John Dolan (35th).

Below are the complete results of Event 19 at the 2012 World Series of Poker:

Event 19: No-limit hold 'em
Buy-in: $1,500
Entries: 2,302
Prize pool: $3,107,700
Players in the money: 243

1. Cliff Goldkind ($559,514)
2. Kennii Nguyen ($347,036)
3. Adria Balaguer ($245,197)
4. Patrick Smith ($176,299)
5. Gregg Wilkinson ($128,441)
6. Justin McGill ($94,815)
7. David Peters ($70,886)
8. Barry Shulman ($53,669)
9. Gary Burks ($41,145)
10. Ismael Bojang ($31,916)
11. Jason Wheeler ($31,916)
12. Eric Wasserson ($31,916)
13. Greg Ronaldson ($25,048)
14. Aram Zerounian ($25,048)
15. Philippe Boucher ($25,048)
16. Ted Goldstein ($19,920)
17. William Foster ($19,920)
18. Tai Lam ($19,920)
19. Jean-Paul Delay ($16,004)
20. Paul Siem ($16,004)
21. Stuart Marshack ($16,004)
22. Josh Bergman ($16,004)
23. Andrew Plucker ($16,004)
24. Blake Luther ($16,004)
25. Vince Mulhause ($16,004)
26. Amir Lehavot ($16,004)
27. Bahman Jahanguiri ($16,004)
28. Aaron Amator ($13,021)
29. Andrew Bick ($13,021)
30. Benjamin Reinhart ($13,021)
31. Josh Hillock ($13,021)
32. Matthew Johnson ($13,021)
33. Thomas Roupe ($13,021)
34. Matthias Widmann ($13,021)
35. John Dolan ($13,021)
36. Jeffrey Mahoney ($13,021)
37. Seth Pfaltzgraff ($10,721)
38. Jeff Sluzinski ($10,721)
39. Luke Priour ($10,721)
40. Billy Rodgers ($10,721)
41. Justin Schwartz ($10,721)
42. Jeff Blenkarn ($10,721)
43. Jessica Hanna ($10,721)
44. Aviv Shaham ($10,721)
45. Nicholas Julia ($10,721)
46. Susan Sawyersmith ($8,919)
47. Jason McMillin ($8,919)
48. Bhakta Rizal ($8,919)
49. Scott Heinemann ($8,919)
50. Kelvin Beattie ($8,919)
51. Sergey Pomerantsev ($8,919)
52. Dustin Curtis ($8,919)
53. Jason Manger ($8,919)
54. Shreeniwas Kelkar ($8,919)
55. Sam Stein ($7,520)
56. William Heimiller ($7,520)
57. Mikhail Shevchuk ($7,520)
58. Alexey Popov ($7,520)
59. Lenny Spina ($7,520)
60. Kevin Dauber ($7,520)
61. James Tolbert ($7,520)
62. Nicholas Rampone ($7,520)
63. Zachary Humphrey ($7,520)
64. David Dalesandro ($6,401)
65. Dan Hill ($6,401)
66. Paul Fehlig ($6,401)
67. Arjun Pasricha ($6,401)
68. Charidimos Demetriou ($6,401)
69. Alan Wasserberger ($6,401)
70. Mark Schmid ($6,401)
71. Marcus Katz ($6,401)
72. Thomas Leto ($6,401)
73. Grzegorz Derkowski ($5,500)
74. Jonathan Rosen ($5,500)
75. Brian Paulus ($5,500)
76. Francis Mariani ($5,500)
77. Ravi Raghavan ($5,500)
78. Genaro Favela ($5,500)
79. Robert Bright ($5,500)
80. Danny Smith ($5,500)
81. Michael Wasserson ($5,500)
82. Dan Gannon ($4,785)
83. Kenneth Hicks ($4,785)
84. David Hodgkins ($4,785)
85. Thomas Fuller ($4,785)
86. Kyle Zartman ($4,785)
87. Jason Higa ($4,785)
88. Jaspreet Panchhi ($4,785)
89. Yoon Kim ($4,785)
90. Matthew Weber ($4,785)
91. Salim Namat ($4,195)
92. Adam Latimer ($4,195)
93. Ryan Dykhouse ($4,195)
94. Philip Bartholet ($4,195)
95. Jakub Dobias ($4,195)
96. Matt Stout ($4,195)
97. David Lin ($4,195)
98. David Roper ($4,195)
99. Bradley Craig ($4,195)
100. Benjamin Clayborn ($3,729)
101. Jeffrey Lennon ($3,729)
102. Hien Nguyen ($3,729)
103. Samuel Grafton ($3,729)
104. Dean Schultz ($3,729)
105. Gabriele Lepore ($3,729)
106. Mohammad Siddiqui ($3,729)
107. Christina Lindley ($3,729)
108. Harrison Gimbel ($3,729)
109. Sean Pramuk ($3,729)
110. Robert Perry ($3,729)
111. Benjamin Vinson ($3,729)
112. Phillip Delaney ($3,729)
113. Bobby Shasta ($3,729)
114. Richard Trigg ($3,729)
115. Nair Jayakrishnan ($3,729)
116. Jonathan Clancy ($3,729)
117. Tommy Tran ($3,729)
118. Jason Fennell ($3,729)
119. Steve Moca ($3,729)
120. James Arruebarena ($3,729)
121. Robert Lipkin ($3,729)
122. Cliff Josephy ($3,729)
123. James Riggs ($3,729)
124. Tyler Peterson ($3,729)
125. Fred Goldberg ($3,729)
126. Gianluca Speranza ($3,729)
127. Gerlad Maser ($3,729)
128. Eric Perez ($3,729)
129. Scott Smith ($3,729)
130. Chris Bolek ($3,729)
131. Henry Liang ($3,729)
132. Christopher Etmanskie ($3,729)
133. Tommy Nguyen ($3,729)
134. Micah Raskin ($3,729)
135. John Wolfe ($3,729)
136. Joseph Stark ($3,356)
137. Zachary Stites ($3,356)
138. Kevin Manley ($3,356)
139. Tod Terlesky ($3,356)
140. Stanley Chao ($3,356)
141. Andras Stumpf ($3,356)
142. Adam Podstawka ($3,356)
143. Jeff Fletcher ($3,356)
144. Daniel Noseworthy ($3,356)
145. John Wagner ($3,356)
146. David Kurtz ($3,356)
147. Andrew Spears ($3,356)
148. Mark Crowson ($3,356)
149. Justin Kindred ($3,356)
150. Jeffrey Wan ($3,356)
151. Steven Gurney-Goldman ($3,356)
152. Jason Lee ($3,356)
153. Scott Sitron ($3,356)
154. Peter Alson ($3,356)
155. Christopher Wiggins ($3,356)
156. Jeremy Tucker ($3,356)
157. Cristiano Galeazzi ($3,356)
158. Thomas Ogara ($3,356)
159. Arthur Tanimoto ($3,356)
160. Dave Terry ($3,356)
161. Rob Perelman ($3,356)
162. Robert Pisano ($3,356)
163. Rory Macleod ($3,356)
164. Thomas Tremper ($3,356)
165. Michael Levine ($3,356)
166. David Miscikowski ($3,356)
167. Matthew Parry ($3,356)
168. Alessio Peciarolo ($3,356)
169. Billy McBrayer ($3,356)
170. Shawn Ensman ($3,356)
171. Olivier Theze ($3,356)
172. Joanne Monteavaro ($3,076)
173. Sharon Helldorfer ($3,076)
174. Ken McKay ($3,076)
175. Robert Hughes ($3,076)
176. Ricky Tang ($3,076)
177. Lynne Mitchnick ($3,076)
178. Collin Moshman ($3,076)
179. Anthony Green ($3,076)
180. Jeffrey Keena ($3,076)
181. Anthony Fung ($3,076)
182. John Wakeen ($3,076)
183. Thomas Levesque ($3,076)
184. Danny Noam ($3,076)
185. Olegs Pavlucuks ($3,076)
186. Matthew Livingston ($3,076)
187. Uri Kucinski ($3,076)
188. Avery Cardoza ($3,076)
189. In Sun Geoum ($3,076)
190. Douglas Songer ($3,076)
191. Feming Chan ($3,076)
192. Manuel Garcia ($3,076)
193. Brian Niekerk ($3,076)
194. Lenny Targon ($3,076)
195. Frank Holloway ($3,076)
196. Randy Lew ($3,076)
197. Bryan Pena ($3,076)
198. Kevin MacDonald ($3,076)
199. Max Ovseyevitz ($3,076)
200. Ronald Hines ($3,076)
201. Gurminder Singh ($3,076)
202. Jason Antione ($3,076)
203. Mark Komar ($3,076)
204. Kevin Funderbunk ($3,076)
205. Frank Turudic ($3,076)
206. Roy Thung ($3,076)
207. Alexsander Richardson ($3,076)
208. Frank Rusnak ($2,796)
209. Benjamin Martin ($2,796)
210. Andrew Conrad ($2,796)
211. Foster Hays ($2,796)
212. Jared Ingles ($2,796)
213. Kenneth Manson ($2,796)
214. (Not reported) ($2,796)
215. Victor Ramdin ($2,796)
216. Motoyuki Mabuchi ($2,796)
217. Yuk Mui ($2,796)
218. Francois Zayas ($2,796)
219. Geffrey Klein ($2,796)
220. Yueqi Zhu ($2,796)
221. Jon Aguiar ($2,796)
222. Robin Miller ($2,796)
223. Derek Lerner ($2,796)
224. Emiel Gnoza ($2,796)
225. Myro Garcia ($2,796)
226. Buzzard Alavi ($2,796)
227. James Campbell ($2,796)
228. John Short ($2,796)
229. (Not reported) ($2,796)
230. Marc Fishman ($2,796)
231. Arkadiy Tsinis ($2,796)
232. Dotan Melech ($2,796)
233. Tom Braband ($2,796)
234. Noah Bronstein ($2,796)
235. Marc Adler ($2,796)
236. Monir Maher ($2,796)
237. Brandon Liberman ($2,796)
238. Robert Betbese ($2,796)
239. Aaron Linden ($2,796)
240. Philip Yeh ($2,796)
241. Isaac Haxton ($2,796)
242. Lauren Kling ($2,796)
243. Alex Bolotin ($2,796)
T-244. Thomas Roach ($1,398)
T-244. Ben Lefew ($1,398)

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Andrew Feldman

ESPN.com

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Andrew Feldman is ESPN.com's Poker Editor. He is the host of the Poker Edge Podcast and co-host of ESPN Inside Deal. Andrew has covered the poker industry for ESPN since 2004.