UFC Announcer Wins Grand Slam of Poker

Bruce Buffer has been the announcer for the Ultimate Fighting Championship for a long time now, and he’s been playing poker almost as long. He has a tournament resume that stretches back to 2005, but in all that time he had never won an event – never, that is, until last night. Buffer emerged victorious from the main event of the Grand Slam of Poker held at Hustler Casino in Los Angeles. 

With a $225 entry fee and a $200,000 guaranteed prize pool, the tournament drew 1,484 players over four starting days to build a final prize pool of $286,600. It’s just the latest Los Angeles poker tournament to feature big guarantees, small buy-ins and multiple starting days – and much like the similar tournaments held at Commerce, players who busted on one starting day were allowed to register and play on other starting days until they ran out of chances.

Buffer’s take as the last man standing (or

is it last man sitting?) was $75,000. That beats his previous best score of $40,420 for finishing third in a preliminary event at the 2007 LA Poker Classic. The UFC announcer now has four different five-figure cashes on his poker resume after taking down the Grand Slam of Poker – and two of them have come this year, as he managed to finish 478th in the WSOP Main Event. That officially gives him four more five-figure cashes than Larry Flynt, the man who owns the Hustler Casino (and a few other businesses named Hustler, too).

As for Flynt, he collects the rake from poker games at Hustler each week – and that’s a position far better than the winner’s seat in any tournament.