Clonie Gowen(credit: Clonie Gowen's Official Web Site)
107 players took to the felt at the start of the World Poker Open Main Event on Sunday October 26th, 2008. They generated a nice prize pool of $508, 950. Only the final nine would receive any of it. Those nine returned on Tuesday to fight it out for the title. Clonie Gowen, the former Miss Teen Oklahoma contestant, was in the chip lead at the beginning of the action.
By the end of the day, the lovely mom of two collected the last pot after going into the heads-up match-up against 26 year old pro player BJ McBrayer from Tuscaloosa, AL. She had a 3 to 2 chip lead when the match commenced and made a full house, aces full of sevens on that last hand. Clonie, a one-time Maxim covergirl, earned $183,224 and a $10,000 Main Event seat at the World Poker Tour’s Beau Rivage tournament in January 2009. This brings her lifetime tournament earnings up to around $1,000,000.