If you don't know who Dennis Phillips is now, you will very soon.

After making the final table at the World Series of Poker main event in Las Vegas early Tuesday morning, Phillips pretty much assured himself of becoming a millionaire.

He's the chips leader with more than 26 million and has the inside track at the $9.12 million grand prize.

"It's amazing," said Phillips, a Clayton native who still has family in the area. "It seems like 20,000 chips (which is what each player starts with) is a lot. Now I have 26 million."

He'll also become a role player on ESPN, the network that helped spur the poker boom earlier this decade. The network is hopeful Phillips and the other eight players who made the finals can help revive the sport, which has lost some of its steam in recent years.

For the first time, the final table of the No-Limit Texas Hold'em tournament will be played well after the final nine players are set. To accomodate ESPN, tournament organizers agreed to stage the finals over two days in November to maximize the TV exposure for the event, which has been a constant presence in ESPN's family of networks.

The final table will be cut down to the final two on Nov. 10. The final two players will face off Nov. 11.

"We want people anticipating who will win," World Series of Poker commissioner Jeffrey Pollack told USA Today. "And we think we do that, we'll ultimately increase interest in the World Series of Poker."

ESPN plans to follow the finalists for the next 117 days for a special on the event to be aired on Nov. 4 as a finals preview.

Figure on ESPN as portraying Phillips as the working man's hero. None of the stars of poker have made the final table.

"They are all young guys," Phillips said. "None of them are famous."

After looking through some poker message boards, it doesn't appear the "young guns," as Phillips called them, are very respected. There was already a groundswell of support growing for the St. Louis car salesman who grew up on a farm south of Clayton.

"Anybody with gray hair is going to back me," the 53-year-old Phillips said.

Life as Phillips knows it is over -- at least for a while. The quiet days of selling commercial trucks at Broadway Truck Center in St. Louis are finished.

He says he's going to go back to selling cars, but hinted that he may turn into a professional card player depending on what happens in Vegas in four months. He's already retained an attorney in St. Louis. He's been bombarded with endorsement offers, something that boggles his mind.

One poker Web site, PokerStars.net, offered Phillips money to pull off his lucky St. Louis Cardinals hat and put on one of theirs, something many card players do. He declined, instead opting for a sticker that he affixed to the side of the hat, which is filled with autographs of poker's top pros.

More offers will come his way before the lights go on again in Vegas for the man who is being called "Ford Man." Prior to his job in St. Louis, Phillips was a salesman at Gem City Ford Lincoln Mercury in Quincy.

Running on two hours of sleep and plenty of adrenaline, Phillips figured he had already conducted about 20 interviews by late Tuesday morning.

He says he's going to watch all of ESPN's weekly shows on the World Series, which start on July 22. It will be prep work for Vegas.

"I'll watch every minute of them, and they'll watch every minute I'm on," Phillips said.

Then he'll hope to win the big prize and the diamond-encrusted championship bracelet that comes with winning the main event.

"The odds of doing this are extremely slim," he said. "You have to get a little luck, too. There is no doubt about that."

-- dobrien@whig.com/221-3365