$3,500 WPT RRPO Championship
$2,000,000 Guaranteed | Structure | Payouts
Level 23:  20,000/40,000 with a 40,000 ante
Players Remaining:  40 of 1,566

It’s always a pleasant surprise when we get a deep run from a player who is famous for something other than poker, and that includes sports and political analyst Nate Silver, who started the day second in chips.

Silver first rose to prominence as a sports statistician and analyst, and then became much more famous when the election forecasting system he developed successfully predicted 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 U.S. presidential election and 50 of the 50 states in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

Silver is the founder and editor-in-chief of media outlet FiveThirtyEight, and he is widely considered one of the top U.S. election analysts, particularly when it comes to polling data.

But throughout it all, Silver has been a serious poker player (dating back to the pre-Moneymaker era), starting as an online player, but occasionally showing up for major poker tournaments.

Silver is fresh off a strong WSOP, where he racked up four cashes, including a runner-up finish in the $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship to earn $151,842. That’s a strong result for someone who didn’t play the full schedule of most professional poker players.

Silver picked up his first cash at Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood back in April during the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown, when he finished 161st to earn $7,465.

Now he’s at the final five tables of the Seminole Hard Rock ‘n’ Roll Poker Open Championship, guaranteed at least $18,390 with a shot at the top prize of $778,490.

Silver has yet to win a major live tournament, and after getting heads-up for a WSOP bracelet this summer, he likely wants that “W” more than ever.