UPDATE: It took an entire weekend—the weekend where the Mike Postle/Stones Gambling Hall cheating scandal broke, nonetheless—but the account did come off restriction the morning of 30 September.
For some reason known only to the folks at Twitter, my @pokermutant account has been restricted since about Friday (27 September) at 8pm. No indication that it’s been hacked or that I did something untoward, though my last tweet was about the Bellagio 5 Diamond series, and I’d been discussing Galaxy Quest with Dara O’Kearney. That didn’t seem so offensive at the time, but I guess it was.
I just get routed to a page telling me to confirm my phone number, saying it’ll send me a text message, but I tried that so many times while I was playing the Friday night Final Table $10K GTD NLHE that eventually Twitter said I was restricted from doing that, too, even though I never got a message. Tried changing my passsword, which means I’m going to have to update it on the numerous devices where I use it, but I’m still restricted. Not the greatest timing for a reason I’m going to sit on until I can tweet again.
It’s been a busy month for players from the Pacific Northwest and not just for those of us who were down at the Chinook Winds Fall Coast Poker Classic a couple of weeks back.
The big winner of the period was (mostly former) Portlander George Wolff, with a win in the British Poker Open Event #2 PLO at Aspers Casino in London, a £10,500 buy-in tournament with 30 entries, followed by the 2nd place finish in BPO Event #7 PLO, where 15 players put up £26K each. Wolff moves from #41 to #28 on the PNW Poker leaderboard as he closes in on the $1M mark in earnings.
We’ve mentioned before that it’s tough to move up a spot one you hit the top end of the Leaderboard, but James Romero did it finally, pulling himself into the #9 spot from #10, as one of only 2 US players in the money at Merit Poker Retro in Kyrenia, Cyprus. His 7th-place showing in the $5K buyin #13 $2M GTD NLHE Main Event was just enough to move him ahead of Rep Porter.
landen Lucas (Portland) had a good month, as well, coming in 2nd at WPT Deepstacks San Diego NLHE, a $1,100 buyin tournament with 252 entries, then heading north to WSOPC Thunder Valley #12 NLHE Main Event, where he came in 8th. He moves up nearly 1600 places on the Leaderboard with his two biggest-ever wins (a phrase you’re going to be hearing a lot in this edition), to #426.
Dipping into the results from Chinook Winds, Forks, Washington’s Daniel Anderson eclipsed his other Hendon Mob results (4 of them) by winning the Fall Coast Poker Classic #21 $150K NLHE High Roller, beating 65 other entries that put up $2,500 for the buyin. He goes from #1945 to #511. 2nd place wasn’t the first cash for Graham Duke (Hillsboro), but the other two on his record were earlier in the week, at the same series. Duke debuts at #748. It was far from the first recorded cash for Adam Barker of Bonney Lake, Washington (who I met because I was flopping sets of aces against his buddy in that day’s $40K GTD), but it was his biggest. Barker rises from #768 to #494. 4th place was Jake Davis‘s second (and largest) cash. The Corvallis resident enters the Leaderboard at #1431.
Salem poker veteran Casey Ring and Portland newcomer Rich Bak chopped #24 $250K NLHE Main Event, with Ring picking up his biggest cash and Bak picking up his first. Bak enters the Leaderboard at a very respectable #653; Ring moves from #434 to #254. Portland’s Chris Dillard picked up 3rd, and moves more than 2000 spots to #987. Long-time Beaverton fixture Sam Nguyen grabbed 4th and a 75-place jump to #303. Portland newcomer Danny Lee‘s first cash (5th place) pops him into #1782. And Rafael Stern (Seattle) moves from #1208 to #877 with a 6th-place finish.
A first cash for Portland’s Tri Ton in Event #1 $125K GTD NLHE puts him in at #1064. George Waller (Seattle) and Salem’s Ty Ege tied in second and third; Ege debuts as #1606 and Waller rises from #805 to #572.
Andy Su (Portland) won Event #2 $50K GTD NLHE (The One With the Big Overlay), and moves up 14 places to #176.
John Gribben (Olympia) and I (the Poker Mutant, Portland) chopped Event #3 $50K GTD NLHE after 12 grueling hours. John enters the Leaderboard at #1879 and I (the Poker Mutant) climb into the 3-digit range, from #1110 to #836.
Michael Palo (Woodinville, Washington) picked up 12th place at HPT East Chicago #11 NLHE Main Event, in a field of 579. His deep run moves him 13 places, to #157.
Finally, Dustin An of Redmond won the Venetian Deepstack Extravaganza III #4 $35K NLHE Monster Stack, jumping nearly 40 places to #306.
Still no full results from the Wildhorse Summer Poker Round Up; Fall is upon us in just 6 weeks. Probably be some action coming up on the Leaderboard from Run It Up Renonext month, as well as WSOPC Lake Tahoe and more!
UPDATE: Announcement at the start of play that the 60-minute dinner break will be after Level 6 of the Main Event instead of Level 8.
When I got news yesterday that ’70s (& ’80s!) pop star Eddie Money passed away at the age of 70, my thought was of the only time I saw him in concert, at the first-ever concert held at Eugene’s Autzen Stadium, which had The Grateful Dead and Santana as headliners, with country-rockers The Outlaws and newly-minted star Eddie Money as opening acts. Kind of sobering to think that when he did that concert, he was half my current age.
Some high-school buddies and I decided to go. Checking back on the date—41 years ago in the summer of 1978—I’m not really sure if I needed to convince my parents to let me go (I was about to start my senior year in high school and I’m pretty sure it was my first rock concert), but maybe the fact that it was in the daytime and an open-air stadium worked in my favor. My buddies Chris Lee and Jon Pitchford were there, I was wearing a red t-shirt with a metallic silver unicorn applique on it (I was there for the Dead) from the science-fiction and fantasy book/game shop where I got my Dungeons & Dragons stuff (and which would be my employer for four nears starting the next spring). Somewhere I might still have the photo of the crowd that ran on the front page of the Eugene Register-Guard where I think I was able to spot the red dot of my shirt amongst the sea of people.
Nobody I knew listened to Eddie Money (or The Outlaws, for that matter) but his first album was ubiquitous that year, in a way that music really could be before the streaming era, MP3s, MTV, CDs, or event the Walkman, which didn’t come out until a year later. So you knew the standards by ear even if you weren’t listening to them. Anyway, RIP, Eddie!
Payouts in the High Roller
I busted out of Event #22 $40K NLHE just before the money in a hand I misplayed. We’d gone to dinner break with just under four tables, and I’d nearly doubled up just before the break to an average stack We had about a dozen players to go before the money. Our table was seven-handed, and when it folded to me on the first hand after break, I opened [qc js] to 10K from UTG2 (big blind was 4K). Everyone folded. So far so good. 100K in my stack, 25bb.
The second hand I picked up [ts tc]. UTG opened to 10K. I should have re-raised, but I was trying to be cautious of the big stacks behind me. UTG didn’t have me covered by a lot, but some of the players left to act were several times my depth. So I just called. First mistake. Everyone else folded.
The flop wasn’t horrible: [qx 9x 6x]. Don’t remember suits, just that it was a rainbow. UTG checked and I checked behind. Second mistake.
The turn looks great: [td] UTG bets, I shove and he instacalls with [kx jx] of course. All the luck in the world will not get the board to pair, and I blow out in 29th place, just eight spots from the cash. So aggravating.
Anyway, the only event left on the schedule is Saturday’s Event #24 $250K GTD NLHE Main Event.
Starting stack is 40K (including the optional $25 10K dealer appreciation chips). Levels are 50 minuteson Day 1, with breaks every two levels. Breaks are15 minutes long, except for the third and fourth breaks. Registration ends (no re-entry) at the end of the 30-minute break 3 (after Level 6). There’s a 60 minute dinner break after Level 8.
At the end of registration is a $200 addon for 30K in chips.
The first level starts with everyone 400bb deep, with the starting stack decreasing to 200bb in Level 2, 133bb in Level 3, then for Levels 4, 5, and 6: 100bb, 66bb, and 50bb, respectively. With the relatively large addon, A fresh starting stack will be 70bb.
One thing I like to do is compare the rate of increase in the big blind, or cost of level. If you figure the cost of maintaining at a particular level relates to the amount, you can see the levels where the structure ratchets up the pain for the short stacks. Below is a chart showing the structure from after the addon (Level 6) to after dinner on Day 2, including comparisons of how fast the big blind increases compared to the increase of the cost of a round (CoR).
An increase of 25%—33% is typical. I’ve highlighted the areas where the increase is greater than that. You can see that in Level 8, even though the big blind doesn’t increase all that much, the CoR jumps up by 50% (from 2,400 to 3,600) because of the ante increase. If you assume two minutes per hand and 25 hands in each level of Day 1, that’s 400 chips per hand on average, or 10,000 chips to blinds and antes for Level 8. If you came in with a 70K stack (starting and addon) at the beginning of Level 7 and didn’t play a hand, you would be down to about 54K.
After dinner are another couple of levels with slightly-larger-than-average increases, but the surprising one is the lullaby at the end of Day 1, where Level 12 smooths out, increasing by only a sixth of the previous level’s CoR.
The tournament today doesn’t have re-entry, so be careful out there! After this, it’s back into semi-retirement for me!
See the inverse relationship between me winning at poker and me blogging? Cash big on Day 2, no blogs for a few days, then back to the daily blogging grind…
Even after a high like early Monday morning, a week of losing is a bit frustrating, not the least of which is because I was in the last of the High Roller satellites yesterday evening and managed to get [ad 7d] all in with 20bb from the button against kings in the big blind (not just ripping it in, it was my raise and 4-bet shove), and flop a flush draw, turn a straight draw, and whiff the river. So, no High Roller for me this morning; my bankroll management has gotten better since I have a job.
The series so far, coming into the final weekend: $4,900 in buyins (including 8 tournaments, 4 satellite tournaments, and one cash sesion). On the plus side: one $575 voucher for the Main Eventand more than $10K in cash. Add in the room, meals, etc. and you can see why I’m not buying into the High Roller directly. Way easier to do these numbers when they’re not red.
So while all of the crushers are competing for the $150K guarantee today, I’ll be slaving away in the $40K guarantee salt mines. No giant payout at the end of that one, but I won’t be compromising my hard-earned profit.
Plus, I got word last night from Molly Mossey that I should be getting my piece of her EPT Barcelona cash soon (the check is in the mail!) so the summer has been pretty decent for a retired poker player/writer.
I was conflicted about whether I wanted to shell out the money for the Big Bounty tournament or wait for the Big O, so I put out a poll on Twitter. The results were tied, so I went with the first one, as it happened, I got to play both!
Yesterday was frustrating as Event #17 $40K GTD NLHE Big Bounty was a return to card deadedness. I opened [ah kh] got a call from the blinds and folded to an aggressive open on a 9-high flop. Opened tens under the gun and got four callers with a king and a queen on the flop and folded to a bet. Those were the only two decent hands I saw in the first couple of hours. I played [as 2s] and managed to take a small pot from [ax kx] when I paired my deuce. I tweeted out that my VPIP was less than 5% and Angela Jordison replied from the other side of the room:
I lasted about four hours, then had tens again under the gun, got three calls against my raise, flopped [9x 8x 8x] and jammed, getting called by [jx 8x] (offsuit). At least we were past the re-entry point.
Jumped into the Event #18 $25K GTD Big O got short real fast, got lucky and tripled up, then busted my first bullet in just about 30 minutes. Joe Brandenburg on my left in Seat 2 and a very aggressive young player in Seat 9 to my right.
Bullet number 2 lasted a couple of hours then lost a big hand just before the end of registration and decided not to add on.
Very short before add on break in the Big O, did not add on. Scooped a pot all in first hand back, then two hands with three of a kind IN MY HAND. Then out on button w AA244 when my raise is called 4 ways and QQ in SB makes a set on flop, calls my cbet shove.
The last 4-Seat GTD NLHE High Roller Satellite of the series started at 5pm and I got into that,
20K in my stack before addon at the end of registration in the HR satellite. @Mawkswell has made an appearance at my table. Meanwhile, there are payouts for one of the biggest of the biggest Big O tournaments in the world, and @MrCleverFox is near the money in the Big Bounty! pic.twitter.com/5T3M1k6WkB
I don’t know if it was that the mix of players at the table had changed as the last weekend of the series approached or if it was a week of (for most of us) losses, but the atmosphere felt decidedly testier during this final satellite. It may well have been the latter because we started off with John Gribben and some other players who were familiar from previous events. The new addition I knew of was Max Young, who’s one of the more laid-back individuals at the table, so it wasn’t him.
Already mentioned how I ended that attempt. This was the only High Roller satellite that made the guarantee, handing out six vouchers plus a sad $35 to seventh place (that’s just under one tenth of the buyin and addon).
The High Roller is about to start! Good luck everyone! I’l be watching enviously from across the room…
Since David Long, my usual travelling partner for the various incarnations of the Chinook Winds poker series wasn’t able to make it for this one at the last minute, I invited my father to come down for a couple of days.
My family is not a gambling family. For one, we didn’t have a lot of money; when Dad was a boy in Gresham, his parent’s house didn’t have running water, and that was after World War 2. Second we came from frugal stock that watched budgets; there was no fall-back for my folks. I never set foot in a casino or went to Vegas until I was in my 40s, and that was for a trade show, it wasn’t until several years later that I started playing poker. Dad hadn’t ever been in Chinook Winds until we went to the restaurant so we could get a good look at the ocean while we had lunch. At least, that was the plan. It was 11:30am by the time we got there, but they didn’t start lunch service until noon, so we got the most un-breakfasty thing on the menu: steak and eggs, which was fine.
Trip to Safeway for supplies, then back to the motel to dump them in the room before I left Dad to his own devices and headed out for the Event #14$15K GTD Omaha Hi-Lo. Not long before the second break, I was above average, but then it all went to hell in a handbasket when my top-two pair scoop got sucked out on by a rivered better two pair.
After that, it was out on the first hand in Level 10, just after coming back from break with just 4 big bets. Off to get some Boozy Shakes!
Tomorrow’s schedule includes the last satellite for Friday’s High Roller, a Main Event (Saturday) satellite, Big O and the Big Bounty. Seriously conflicted about whether I want to play the Bounty or Big O.
My plan to do daily updates about the events here took an early hit, but in a good way, as the five of you reading the blog already know.
Sunday (seems like so far away at this point) started off well. There was a 10-Seat GTD Main Event Satellite at 1pm (no 11am game because of the restart for the $125K from Saturday).
There was a decent turnout for the satellite, which was good for the series after the overlays in the three events Saturday). I did reasonably well and picked up a voucher.
That wrapped up in almost exactly four hours, with 18 of the 80 entries getting seats.
The satellite ended just as the $50K GTD tournament was starting. There had been a nearly $20K overlay on Saturday, and I was sort of expecting that Sunday might be more of a bath for Chinook, but by the time registration closed, they’d just met the guarantee.
I busted in the second level, if I remember correctly—things are already getting a bit hazy—and rebought. 99 < AK, even though I’d had pocket aces twice in an orbit. So I needed to make 18th place to break even on the event. It took nearly six hours of play for me to get any traction; I flopped a set of kings against king-queen to double up, which put me over average for the first time.
29 left. I have 10bb. All ins spreading like zombie virus
I cockroached along for three more hours, getting progressively shorter as we approached the bubble. There was a long period there where it seemed like every all-in won, so the other short stacks just slipped down the ladder a little more. A couple of gross situations where king-jack shoved and was called by the table leader with king-queen, with a jack on the flop. Then he had another chunk taken out on the next hand (maybe not as gross as the guy in the $125K who lost with aces twice in short succession to break his big stack).
I finally got back over chip average with queens over jacks at the eight-hour mark, with four players to go before the money. We had a redraw at three tables just a few minutes before the bubble broke, which went by so fast that I completely missed the announcement and had to verify that we were in the money with Matt Moring, who was running the day’s show.
The rest of the event is kind of a blur. Maybe it was the fact I’d been playing more or less constantly for 14 hours, maybe it was the Long Island Iced Tea I allowed myself when we were down to two tables and someone else was buying. I do know that I got incredibly lucky. More than once.
10 players left. Just got AA twice then set of 4s.
We made the final table just after 3am, but it took almost an hour to get from 9 to 7 players. We were down to 5 when I lost a bit of ground calling a short stack who shoved seven-eight with my pair of sevens. The river was both an eight and made him a flush, but I survived.
Incredibly enough, chopping was never really brought up as we continued on into the early hours. We lost three players in the half-hour between 4:30am and 5am, so it was just me and Olympia’s John Gribben. That was when I proposed a chop.
I’m reasonably confident in my heads-up ranges and strategies, but at 5am,who knows? There were 3.3M chips in play between us, but the blinds were still only 20K/40K, so we had over 80bb between us, so it could have gone on for quite a while and I was really looking forward to playing the 6-Max. Which started in just six hours.
It says Event 2 but this was really Event 5
So John and I chopped. After we’d agreed, I asked for the champion photo, since I was pretty sure I had a slight chip lead. John said he wanted it, because he’d never had one. I hadn’t either, but Matt said he’d take one of both of us, and when John said he wanted to hold seven-deuce as his winning hand, I figured he might not mind if I did the old antenna trick. So congrats to the both of us!
I got back to the motel about 5:30, didn’t manage to get to sleep until after 6. Then daybreak hit and I needed something to drink at 7, and couldn’t get back to sleep despite trying. So it was off to the 6-Max (after a trip to the bank, thank you Chinook Winds for taking debit cards for buyins) where I was a little light-headed from both adrenaline and lack of sleep, but had a very good time as people ribbed me about talking so much about the night before. Or early morning.
The 6-Max was going well and I made it down to about 40th place, then played one of those small blind hands because of an ace and a couple of limps that you would have thrown away in any other position. I was about 40bb deep with Nick “Wonka” Getzen on my left, with ace-three and I called behind the limpers. Nick checked and the flop was something like ace-X-five. Nick and I got involved through to the river with a jack and queen coming and—not believing he had an ace at that point—I shoved. He seemed to really consider folding, and I knew I was in real trouble when he was musing about whether I could have somehow caught an ace-jack. He did eventually call with the ace-five, and I went to the showers.
I ran into Toma Barber at the break before the end of entries. I met Toma here at Chinook Winds six years ago before the casino decided it could do a better job than the Deepstacks Poker Tour. He was sitting next to me as a short stack on Day 1 of the first $1K+ buyin tournament I cashed (though it was a min-cash). Toma went on to take sixth.
I asked if he was in the 6-Max and he said he was waiting for the freezeout in the evening, so in a flush of cash and haze of fatigue, I bought him in. As before he made it deeper than me, though not quite to the money. My fifth-ever stacking adventure!
That was it for me on Monday. I got a nice dinner at the casino steakhouse overlooking the beach and headed for some sleep.
Tuesday was back to more losing. I had a great breakfast with Toma at 60’s Cafe & Diner then went back to my room before walking down the beach back to the casino. I went up to the cash area and got into the 2/4 O8 game. I sat next to the dealer in seat 1, but then the guy in seat 2 moved away from me and I started to wonder if it was the fact that it had been pretty warm out on the beach. I stayed for 90 minutes to donate a hundy, then had to catch a ride back to the hotel to shower and change because there wasn’t enough time before the HORSE tournament to walk. Not the plan but you need to adapt.
Fresh once again, I set my sights to HORSE, but fizzled out on a hand where I had a pretty good draws but the guy on my left had even better draws and a better hand in the end. Disappointing to bust before the payouts were even posted when I’d skipped the Senors tournament in the morning.
After that, it was time for another shot at a High Roller satellite. Once again it missed the number of players needed to justify the 4-Seat guarantee. Made it about halfway through but nowhere near the vouchers.
Does that catch us up? Plan for the day is my dad’s arriving in town this morning. 1pm is the Omaha Hi-Lo tournament. 5pm is another High Roller satellite (which I hope to not be in).
I’ve rarely had the confluence of having time and money to do a full schedule at a series. For most of the time I was playing poker intensely, I was always on the edge of being broke (well, really, I was broke), playing little daily tournaments, building up some money, then blowing it on a shot at something that rarely paid off. Or getting my car servied. Bankroll management is more difficult when your life and poker bankrolls (such as they are) are intertwined.
For instance, a year-and-a-half ago, when I had my largest-ever cash here at Chinook Winds, I used a big chunk of it to pay off my property taxes, paid income taxes on another big chunk, then had to replace a water heater that decided to go out the next week. Stuff starts adding up.
So I’ve been anticipating this series maybe a little too much. The last week at the office, I could feel my mind drifting (more than usual) as I counted down the hours. Anyway, I headed out to Lincoln City first thing Saturday morning for the 11am start of Event #1 $125K GTD NLHE, a $290 buyin with a $100 addon and rebuys through the sixth 40-minute level.
Busted my first bullet about 10 minutes into the second level when I got into a raising way with a pair of tens against an aggressive player a couple of seats on my right after a low flop. We both had an over pair to the board all the way to the river, and his was jacks.
They’re announcing that they might be a bit short on registrations for @ChinookWinds @PACWESTclassic #1 $125K GTD NLHE, so
MASSIVE OVERLAY ALERT!
With the number of entries and players left, maybe $25K overlay after addons. Still 50 minutes plus break!
Attendance was a bit light, there was concern that the guarantee might be quite short, but it turned out the $125K wasn’t the real problem for the first day.
A re-entry went a bit better, and I went to the dinner break with an above-average stack, in part due to knocking out First Friend of the Blog Brad Press. That didn’t last that long, however, and I played most of the rest of that tournament in the 10bb zone. Jacks were my bane for the night; I shoved with a pair myself and got called by ace-king, which hit on the flop.
Contrary to expectations, the tournament hit the money on the first day, just short of the scheduled end of play, at 45 players. They broke the bubble, then drew to determine the number of hands before bagging near the end of the 4K/8K level.
The place where the overlay was really a concern was in the 5pm $50K GTD NLHE. I registered this one only about 40 minutes before the second break (with registration open through the 30-minute break). There were only about 100 entries, in a $220 buyin tournament that had a $100 addon. You can do the math.
Brad Press, center
This was a hard game for me. Aside from the fact I came in shorter than I like (but the overlay looked so juicy!), I had the longest period of total card-deadness I can remember in quite a long time (Brad has said something to the effect he’s never seen someone get so many pairs of aces in a game.) But it’s a statistical possibility (something I wrote about for PokerNews a few years back), and just something you have to swallow. Jammed king-queen with about 8bb left, and the big blind woke up with ace-queen.
Running at 8pm most of the nights through the week is a $230 buyin satellite for Friday’s High Roller ($2,500 buyin). Again, a late entry didn’t exactly help. I made it down to two tables (sort of, they miscounted the number of players on three tables and consolidated, then had one guy wandering around until someone busted).
So, a long day with nothing—or rather less than nothing—to show for it. Tournament poker at its finest!
Today’s schedule includes a 10-Seat GTD tournament for the Main Event next weekend at 1pm (the first event started at 11 this morning, GL Steve Myers!) I plan to play that then jump into the $50K GTD that’s due to start at 5pm (that should be interesting if yesterday’s is any indication). Then there’s another High Roller satellite at 8 (which I hope to be too busy to play). And I hear there’s cash games!
Between Hossein Ensan bringing it for us old guys by winning the WSOP Main Event and Molly doing great for poker media in her debut at the EPT, I’m feeling pretty good about coming out of poker retirement for a week to play at the Chinook Winds Fall Coast Poker Classic next weekend. (People laugh when they see me at a game, but I’ve played about 20 live tournaments this year; during the first eight months of the years between 2012 and 2015, I played an average of 200).
Sadly, spending two prime summer weekends at the beach meant a tradeoff , so I missed what could be the last big event held at Portland Meadows Poker Club before the long-rumored conversion into freight-shipping warehouse center happens. There’s still time to catch the last events of the series today! (Brad Press, who took the picture below, took tenth place, by the way.)
Via friend of the blog Brad Press, clock from today's @PDXmeadowspoker $60K GTD NLHE (he's still in, GL!). Couldn't make it myself, but with more than $100K prize pool (payouts shown only for remaining players), it's one of the largest tournaments ever in Portland! pic.twitter.com/1IM1N2jUtF
In the good news/bad news department, results from the Wildhorse Summer Poker Round Up were posted within a couple of days, rather than weeks (or never). In the bad news, for whatever reason, no dates are on the series as posted at Hendon Mob (just “August 2019”), the title of the series duplicates the Spring series, and there’s only one event listed. That’s something, though, right?
Binh “Jimmy” Nguyen was the winner of that event, the Friday +$2K NLHEtournament. His win moves him up two spots to #78 on the Leaderboard.
Moving further afield, Seattle’s John Phan was at the WSOP Foxwoods #6 $500K GTD NLHE final table. The tournament had more than 1,750 entries and a prize pool of $900K. Phan’s 7th-place finish moves him up nearly 100 places on the Leaderboard, to #283.
James Romero had a good showing at EPT Barcelona, not the least of which was in Event #12 EPT Cup NLHE. Typically seen in the high rollers, Romero took a flier on the €550 buyin event that got 3,260 entries, and snagged 3rd place (placing just ahead of a Spanish player named Vicente Romero). Way more than I’ve ever won, but not enough to budge him from his #10 spot on the Leaderboard.
Mill Creek’s online whiz Jordan Westmorland was the only US player to cash in the Melbourne Poker Championship #11 NLHE Main Event, and he won it. He moves from #38 to #31 on the Leaderboard.
It’s not often that there’s significant movement in the top 10 of the Leaderboard. But just a month after Seth Daviestook over the top spot on the Oregon Leaderboard at Hendon Mob, he gets 2nd place in EPT Barcelona #28 NLHE, a 52-entry, €50K buyin high roller that gives him a career-high cash and edges him from #4 to #3 (winkling Brandon Cantu out of that spot) on the overall PNW Leaderboard.
This is the last Leaderboard update until the end of the Chinook Winds series. Hopefully, those results will be promptly and completely reported, and I’ll get a chance to add my own name to the lists!
UPDATE: It took an entire weekend—the weekend where the Mike Postle/Stones Gambling Hall cheating scandal broke, nonetheless—but the account did come off restriction the morning of 30 September.
When I got news yesterday that ’70s (& ’80s!) pop star 
