Mark made it to the money (45 players left) in excellent shape, and was flirting with the 100,000 chip milestone when disaster struck. He picked up Aces in the hold’em section, raised and got called by Minh Ly and Allen Cunningham, two guys you don’t want to run into at a poker table. The flop is K-T-4 and all the money went in between Mark and Minh on the flop, and of course Minh had T-T for the crushing set. Mark still had 30,000 and change, and maintained his composure and focus, climbing back over 50k, but then he ran into a hand in Omaha where he had a ton of outs and the other guy had a made hand, and the board bricked off to knock Mark out in 26th place out of 457 starters for a $7500-ish cash. Obviously a disappointment to get within sight of a final table and not get there, but a remarkably strong performance against a very tough field.
Our famous pal Vanessa Rousso is one of the chip leaders at the end of the night in the RAZZ event, though sadly her fiance Chad Brown busted out near the end of play. Both of them came to join me in cheering on Mark during their breaks from RAZZ, which caused the other players to wonder who this guy was with the big-name fans. Some of it even spilled over onto me - when they left other people on the rail started saying things to me like “wow! you *know* them?”
I will be going back into the WSOP fray tomorrow (Saturday) at noon in another $1500 No-Limit Hold’em event. As before, you can check for updates on my progress HERE where I can send updates from my cell phone.
There should be over 2,000 in the field. I sincerely hope to get through Day 1 so I can force Mark to spend a long day supporting me. If I can come close to his performance today I’ll be thrilled, and if I can surpass him and make it to day 3 (ie the final table) I’ll be giddy. Actually the best scenario would be to give Mark a harried and frantic day on Sunday running back and forth between Vanessa’s RAZZ final table and my $1500 NLHE day 2, followed by getting them both to cheer me on at my final table on Monday, so that my opponents can be the ones wondering who the hell this guy “Huge” is with Vanessa Rousso cheering for him. Yeah, that would be OK.
You can also get updates on my event at cardplayer.com and pokernews.com, but I’m unlikely to get much press unless I go really deep or end up at a table with a celebrity.
I’ve had a lot of tournaments on this trip in which I’ve had good runs, lasted 9 or 10 hours and then busted just short of the money. This would be an excellent time to improve on that trend. Wish me luck…
-huge
No Dim Sum and Hugs for Huge