Counting on the Stache
by Court on 08.22.09, 8:04 pm
With empty tables on both the near and far side of the new event center at the Bike the less than 300 players that showed up for the Legends of Poker played out the first level of the day, with a decent amount of chips moving around considering the deep stacks and small blinds. The 50 / 100 level that the tourney started at saw many players drop below 20k from the 30k starting stacks. The shorter stacks still have plenty of chips going into the 100 / 200 level but will need to do something to change course from their poor starts.
Pocket aces cost both Mohsin “ChicagoCards1″ Charania and last year’s 2nd place finisher here, Amit “Amak316″ Makhija. Charania finished level 1 with around 14k while Makhija has only 12k left to work with as he shoots for another final table appearance here at the Bike. Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke dropped to 18k but was still in good spirits at the first break, talking about how poorly the average LA player is and the best ways to exploit the common mistakes he was seeing at his table. Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin (left) also had a rough first level and is down to 15k after dropping half his starting stack. He is still expecting the mustache he is sporting to bring him luck though.
Many players basically held serve in the first level, finishing up with around the starting stack, give or take a few chips. Kevin “BeL0WaB0Ve” Saul and Adam “A_Junglen” Junglen both came in just under the 30k starting stack while Shannon Shorr, Joe Sebok and Barry Greenstein finished up a few thousand above the starting stack.
Pacing the field after the first level are Bryan “badbeatninja” Devonshire and Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson, both nearing double the starting stack with around 55k chips. Marco was able to pick up a few chips when his K
T
made trips on the turn of a J
T9T
board. Marco called a 4k bet from his opponent but with the 7 on the turn Marco checked and the other player checked behind and mucked his hand after Marco showed his hand for trip tens. That pot got Marco started in the right direction but he has found a way to continue to pile up chips in the early going of the Legends of Poker.
