“Uh oh”
Justin Arnwine hesitated when the flop came all spades and he held a red Ace Ten. He had his opponent dominated and covered, but David Kilcoyne’s KcTs grew legs on the Qs9sXs flop.
28 of the 222 players from Day 1B are now all in-the-money after the turn and river bricked out and Kilcoyne was the bubble in 29th place.
1A and 1B were two very different animals.
2019 Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year and former Baltimore Raven Calais Campbell stopped by this weekend and played a little poker. I promise, you have never been fist-bumped until you’ve been fist-bumped by a professional athlete.
Ouch.
Mr Campbell is a true class act and never let the ticker tape parade of re-entry receipts bring him down.
For a minute on Day 1A Friday I thought Campbell Caruso and Karle were going to a start a law firm. They made up a significant portion of the 109 buy-ins that day. Caruso was the only one to bag, but not before he called a 20BB shove from Russ Dunlevy, doubling the AQo with his 3s2s in the big blind.
Chris had chips to spare and still managed to put an above average stack in the bag Friday night.
Somewhere around bullet three or seven, Mr Campbell was on Ron Hunt’s table. Ron covered everyone else involved in the hand, but when the cards were turned up, he didn’t have a slam-dunk situation.
I’d have to check my notes for whomever was holding the AKo, but that player did out-flop Ron’s JJ. Campbell’s JTo had Ron drawing to one out. One is more than zero, and the last jack in the deck did come on the turn. The only player drawing live at that point against Ron Hunt’s set was Aaron Pinson with AQ. Clean river. Ron KO’s three players in one hand and rides the wave to bag up 405K in bb6K.
2025 MAPO Main winner Frankie Zeta gets seated at Christian Harder’s table along with Brian Altman. Everyone’s got 100K much earlier than any normal human would have that many chips, dealer cold-decks Frankie and Alty with KK and QQ vs Charder’s AA – but Brian’s such a nice guy that the dealer flops him a seat of Queens. He uses those chips to catapult himself to bagging up 1A cL with 150 Bigs, two minutes left in bb6K.
Chris Grove makes it to H4H on 1A with just five big blinds and he’s already mentally prepared himself to bubble. The cards have other plans. He’s on the 7-handed table and moves in with a good blackjack hand, called in two spots.
At the same time, on the 8-handed table, 15 left and paying 14, Brian Seidel opens to 14K at 3K/6K/6K. Brian splashes with reckless abandon in the $2/$5 NL games and higher on the regular. He loves his hand until Ron Hunt moves in for *checks notes* THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND, covering, with other medium stacked players yet to act.
No matter how pretty AK suited is, Brian decided it wasn’t a great spot when Grover only had five big blinds.
Brian folds the Ace King of diamonds, Ron shows JJ, and Chris’s opponents on the other table check down a board of A87cc T Xx. One player flopped the nut flush draw, Caruso has QJ and turns double-gutted.
Chris Grove had an ace and might’ve even made two pair – but most importantly dodged the flush and the five or six more straight outs.
So now Grove has 16+ bigs, Seidel doesn’t show it, but he’s kicking himself for folding the AK.
Barely an orbit or three later, Seidel gets his last 8 or so bigs in, now he’s the one with JJ. His opponent has A3o. The turn card gives Brian a flush draw and a gut show and outs to make a set. Brick river, and we’re ITM.
I do a little paperwork, get home at like 2am, and out of bed by 7:30 so I can grab breakfast with my son before coming back here for another not so short day.
Over two dozen players had won their seat through a satellite and their chips were going into play for hand one at 11:15am on 1B. The field grew. Not just a little, but after twelve 40-min levels, we had 222 entrants and would go H4H at 29.
No huge three-way and four-way all-ins gave anyone a head start for this flight and there was no huge breakaway cL early on.
It wasn’t until reg was closed that anyone really crossed the half million mark.
Overall 28 from tonight half that the night before coming back for a total of 42 players on Day 2.
Cards in the air 11:15am. Shorter of the two flights was last night, with two minutes left in bb6K.
We’ll play 60-min levels on Sunday, down to six players and then bag up for Day 3 2:15pm Monday.
$3,920 Min-cash for 33rd-42nd and 10th place pays $13,575 w/ ten times that to 1st.
$135,753 for a weekend’s work.
The good news is, if Mr Campbell had made it to the final table, the was non-zero chance he could have broken even. He sure did have a good time. Gave me my second fist bump of the day a little while ago, smiled, and said he was glad he could help us make our guarantee.
Eric will be back tomorrow taking pictures and I’ll be running my mouth via keyboard all day Sunday for Day 2.
We’ll do our best to keep those with severe cases of FOMO informed on what’s going on.
Chip counts below. Seating assignments will be posted throughout the room when players arrive to un-bag.
If/when they show up in my inbox overnight, if I get a chance, i’ll post them too.
| Joseph Kim | 869K |
| Shahab Shirazi | 858K |
| Brian Altman | 794K |
| Justin Arnwine | 564K |
| Joseph McKeehen | 544K |
| Chris Caruso | 485K |
| Charles Goelz | 460K |
| Kevin Grobel | 446K |
| Lara Eisenberg | 428K |
| Ron Hunt | 405K |
| Matthew Dillon | 397K |
| Clark Embrey | 393K |
| Christian Harder | 391K |
| Akash Patel | 378K |
| Thomas Cullis | 365K |
| Rana Saleem | 355K |
| Arash Asadabadi | 337K |
| Gintautas Putinas | 323K |
| Valentin Lita | 311K |
| Russell Dunlevy | 306K |
| Hal Rotholz | 305K |
| Alvin Anton | 296K |
| Alan Gendelman | 294K |
| David Zielinski | 289K |
| Angel Lopez | 253K |
| Liam Schmidt | 239K |
| Artem Bilous | 236K |
| Chad Loube | 183K |
| Liam Cheng | 171K |
| Charles Fury | 163K |
| Joseph Crowley | 154K |
| Arthur Zabronsky | 151K |
| Connor Perrigan | 150K |
| Nathan Bomey | 146K |
| Michael Hager | 136K |
| John Petro | 128K |
| Isiah Ditoto | 114K |
| Chris Grove | 101K |
| Chunyu Yang | 101K |
| Frankie Zeta | 100K |
| Elisei Florin | 88K |
| Cody Walker | 82K |