We don't recognize the middle-aged gentleman in Seat 6 at 357, but he's certainly unafraid of the two pros at his table. We just caught Mr. Unknown in a three-way pot against Kevin MacPhee and Carlos Mortensen.
We walked up on fifth street to see Carlos Mortensen doing the betting. He was called in both spots, and he and MacPhee checked sixth street. They called bets from Mr. Unknown there, and he fired one last bullet on seventh street. Check-fold from MacPhee, check-fold from Mortensen, and that's an easy pot for the gentleman.
Mortensen is getting down there after that pot, slipping back to about 1/3rd of his starting stack.
Last year, the race for WSOP Player of the Year was intense. We're guessing it will be again this year, though it's too early to tell as no open event has reached a conclusion; nonetheless, whoever emerges victorious in this tournament will be in decent shape to add their name to this list:
We mentioned the number 606 for last year's field size, and we're fast approaching that total.
The board shows 582 players have registered for this 2012 version of this $1,500 Stud/8 event. With more than two hours still left to register, we'd be surprised if we don't surpass last year's number. It'll be close, though.
After a bet on fourth street, Player 1 raised. Opponent 2 and Aguiar both called, and Player 1 continued the betting the rest of the way through seventh. Opponent 2 called on the last street, while Aguiar tucked and mucked with a ruffle of the lips when his seventh card displeased him.
Player 1 wasn't as strong as he appeared, perhaps. He showed / for two pair, and Aguiar slipped his headphones off to make sure he was seeing things correctly. He was. Opponent 2 took the low half, and Aguiar has been reduced to about 1,950 with that loss.
Last year, Chris Tryba notched three WSOP cashes. One was a 57th-place finish in Event #6 $1,500 Limit Hold’em for a modest $2,961, while the other two were a bit more notable. You see, Tryba is an experience Stud player. On any given day, he can be seen tweeting a picture of a monster chip stack from a 7-Card Stud cash game table, but last year he proved to the world he could hold his own against the big boys playing tournaments.
In Event #21 $10,000 7-Card Stud Championship, Tryba navigated a field of 126 players to make his first major WSOP final table, ultimately finishing in eighth place for $38,812. Less than a week later, Tryba was at it again in Event #33 $10,000 7-Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship, which saw 168 players enter and create a prize pool of $1,579,200. Tryba was in that event and managed to finish in 16th place for $27,888. Not too shabby considering his opponents included Erik Seidel, Phil Laak, David Benyamine, Ted Forrest and Phil Hellmuth.
The point is, Tryba is a stud. We’ve been told he is playing a full schedule of tournaments this summer, and we can’t imagine he’d rather start out any other way than a big cash in the first Stud event of 2012.
We've just lost our first two players of Event #4. If you had the "Under" on two levels before the first elimination, please take your tickets to the window.
We just found one Owais Ahmed, a member of the most recent class of Bracelet Winners.
Last summer, Ahmed put on quite a show in the $2,500 Omaha/Stud Hi/Lo event. His fourth cash of the summer culminated in his first tournament win, a gold bracelet, and a quarter-million dollar bonus. In return, he gave us a couple of the more memorable winners' photos of the year:
Ahmed wasn't done bracelet hunting, though. He took a hefty $50,000 chunk out of his new spending money and bought into the Poker Players Championship just days later. Riding quite the rush, Ahmed quickly proved that his mixed-game success was no fluke, picking his way through one of the toughest WSOP fields ever assembled to find himself at another final table. He outlasted everyone except three men, adding another almost half-million dollars to his pockets.
One year later, we find Ahmed back at it again, and those who've been paying attention might grant a little more respect this time around.
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