Happy New Poker Year, everyone!
Poker is still crawling out of the basement of 2020, particularly here in the Pacific Northwest. There are live venues outside of Portland that are up and running. You can follow @dave_has_aces on Twitter for their adventures at the Seattle-area Red Dragon and Palace Casino.
https://twitter.com/dave_has_aces/status/1352325138692284418
High Mountain Poker in Eugene is announcing games on the NW Poker Facebook group, along with Ontario Poker Room in eastern Oregon. In town, The Gateway near SE 50th & Powell is hosting games. I’m old, but still way down the list for COVID vaccination, so I’m out of the live game for a long while yet.
So let’s move on to the people who are actually winning.
The new entry on the Leaderboard is La Conner, Washington’s Zachary Johns, the runner-up in a 2-way deal in a Wynn Signature Series $20K GTD NLHE with 127 entries. It’s Johns’s first Hendon Mob cash in almost a dozen years. He debuts at #3729.
I don’t typically cover cashes of less than $10K, but I want to throw a bone to Portland player Derek Huynh, for an impressive run at the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza the past month, with five cashes between mid-December and the first week of January, including three final tables that included a 7th, a 5th, and a 4th (in Event #31 $50K GTD NLHE Double Stack) that just about got there. Anyway, impressive run and Huynh moves from #4247 to #1801 on the Leaderboard.
Monty Ford from Wellpinit, Washington made it to 8th place at the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza/MSPT #34 $250K GTD NLHE, in a field of just over a thousand and a prize pool that reached nearly a million dollars. Ford won the Pendleton Spring Poker Round-Up Main Event five years ago. He moves up two hundred spots on the Leaderboard, to #817.
photo courtesy Darin Stout
Wrapping up this first report of the year is friend of the blog, Darin Stout, who took 2nd in a 4-way deal in the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza #9 $80K NLHE MonsterStack. The 571-entry tournament had a prize pool of more than $190K. Stout moves up to #672 from #841. Here’s Darin’s recap:
I orchestrated four way deal, they all wanted to chop evenly for $24k ish each. I said no even though I was shortest stack. Lol. I wanted first and trophy. So…I proposed $21k each and play for the remaining $12k ish and trophy. Then he had me out chipped heads up 15 mil to 2.2 mil since he took out third place guy. I battled for 40 min heads up ish at 125k/250k/125k blinds, had it up to 7.5-8 mil and almost even. Figured if I got lead on him we would chop the rest and he would give me trophy pix but could not pull it off.
photo courtesy Darin Stout