Poker Friends in The Money

I have two friends who had significant cashes yesterday in poker tournaments. Neither did as well as they wanted, but both achievements are very notable.

First, Matt Matros finished 7th at the WPT North American Championship in Niagara Falls. The tournament had 454 entries, each putting up $10,000. Matt walked away with just less than $100K. After having what I would consider to be a fantastic WSOP (Matt may have a different opinion), where he made two final tables and finished 78th out of 6844 entrants.

I was able to watch one of Matt’s final tables on ESPN360.com, where he got sucked out on pretty badly to wipe out a nice chip stack. I was actually in Vegas during Matt’s run to the money, standing in the room at 1 in the morning when they finally made the money. Definitely a lot of fun watching, here’s hoping I can be sitting down for it one day!

You can check out Matt’s redesigned blog at http://mattmatros.com. Matt had a great run a few years ago in the WPT Championship at Bellagio in 2004, finishing at the same final table his best friend, Russell, made. Matt finished 3rd, winning just over $700K.

Another friend, Russell Rosenblum, entered a $3K event at the Festa al Lago tourney currently going on at Bellagio. They got 56 entries, paid 5 spots. After being short-stacked for the entire final table, Russell got down to heads up, worked his way back even in chips, but ended up coming up just short. Coincidentally, he busted with the same two sets of hands (AQ vs JJ) that he did when he made the final table of the WPT Championship in 2004.

Congrats to both!