Do
takes the Dough:
Vietnamese-born Quinn Do wins $2,500 Buy-In
Limit Hold’em Championship
Every
road to the World Series of Poker is different.
Distinctive paths and turns along the
way make every player’s avenue a unique
story. Sadly, most players fail to reach
their target. They crash and burn along
the way. They are defeated in side games
and satellites, and get busted out of
tournaments.
Broken
dreams litter the ‘bad beat highway,’
which has become the fitting nickname
ascribed to the hallway leading from the
poker tournament arena back to the Rio’s
main casino.
This
year, out of the tens of thousands of
poker players who come to Las Vegas from
all over the world, only 45 will return
home as WSOP champions. The rest will
walk the Rio’s long hallway, exchanging
their tales of despair with anyone unfortunate
enough to get trapped and have to listen.
But not all poker tales are bad. Some
have happy endings. Some are even captivating.
The latest champion is a 29-year-old semi-professional
poker player and restaurant owner from
Seattle, WA, named Quinn Do.
Quinn
Do arrived in the United States at the
age of 11. He attended the University
of Washington, where he came within a
few credits of graduating with a degree
in criminology. Do’s ambition was to work
in criminal justice – and he considered
a career as a private investigator.
“It’s
very interesting to me -- trying to understand
why people act the way they do,” Do explained.
“In criminology, you get into people’s
minds. The psychological part of it really
appealed to me.”
As much as criminology appealed to Do,
he discovered he could make better money
by opening up a restaurant. Do’s life
took its first major detour when opened
a Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant, which
turned out to be very successful. That
was just the beginning. His life was to
take another route entirely when a few
friends walked in one day and started
to talk about poker.
“I
was sitting there and my friend told me
she made a lot of money playing poker.
I already knew how to play, so I went
to some of the local clubs and played
$10-20 (limit hold’em). I did that for
about three months. But I really got a
lot better at it when I started playing
online. I did that for a year before I
started to play in tournaments.”
The
total prize pool for the Limit Hold’em
event amounted to $857,900. The final
table included one former gold bracelet
winner –‘Captain Tom’ Franklin, a three-time
champion. The chip leader was Chi Chang,
who enjoyed a substantial lead against
the rest of the field. After the 20 finalists
on Day Two played down to the remaining
10, players and starting chips counts
were as follows:
THE
FINAL TABLE:
SEAT
1: Noah Boeken 20,000
SEAT 2: Quinn Do 77,000
SEAT 3: Sam Arzoin 61,000
SEAT 4: Rodeen Talebi 101,000
SEAT 5: Greg Debora 44,000
SEAT 6: Mike David 87,000
SEAT 7: Spencer Sun 105,000
SEAT 8: Tom Franklin 124,000
SEAT 9: Chi Chang 212,000
SEAT 10: Tony Nasr 33,000
Players
were eliminated in the following order:
10th
Place – About an hour into play,
Greg Debora took a bad beat when he moved
‘all in’ with A-Q. Tom Franklin had Q-J
and watched with delight as a queen and
jack both flopped. To put salt into Debora’s
wound, another queen fell – making Franklin
a full-house. Debora got the crowd’s sympathy,
plus $10,295 for 19th place.
9th
Place – Dutch poker pro Noah Boeken
won the 2005 European Poker Tour championship
event at Copenhagen. This is his second
time to cash at this year’s World Series.
Boeken lost most of his chips to Quinn
Do’s trip aces, and then went out a short
time later. Boeken collected $17,160 for
9th place.
8th
Place – By the time play was eight-handed,
the betting limits at 5,000-10,000 were
so high that a key hand or two was all
that was necessary to take the chip lead.
The downside was that losing a hand or
two meant elimination. Spencer Sun won
the Tournament of Champions in 2000. The
northern California-based computer programmer
appeared to be one of the favorites at
this final table, but he ran card cold
during the worst phase of the tournament.
Sun did make two pair on his final hand,
but lost to Quinn Do’s straight. Sun went
down in 8th place, good for $25,735.
7th
Place – Rodeen Talebi went out
next when he was short stacked and committed
his last chips in the big blind. Tom Franklin
eliminated Talebi, who was making his
second final table appearance at this
year’s World Series. Talebi finished in
6th place in the previous Limit Hold’em
event. This time, his prize amounted to
$34,315.
6th Place –
Sammy Arzoin was short-stacked during
most of Day Two. He went ‘all in’ after
flopping a pair of queens, but ended up
losing to Quinn Do’s flush. Arzoin, who
was born in Casablanca, Morocco, has several
in-the-money finishes at the World Series.
This time, his win for 6th place amounted
to $42,895.
5th Place –
‘Captain’ Tom Franklin had the chip lead
at one point, but lost it as Quinn Do’s
rush of cards continued. Franklin finally
got low on chips and went ‘all in’ with
A-4 suited after an ace flopped. Giant-killer
Quinn Do called with 10-10 and hit a set
of 10s on the turn. That was a dishonorable
discharge for the Captain. Fifth place
paid $51,475. Franklin’s bid for a fourth
gold bracelet came up short.
4th
Place – Tony Nasr, a.k.a. ‘TNT’
was the next player to explode. He was
desperately short-stacked and was competing
with Mike Davis to move up a notch on
the money ladder. Nasr lost that battle
and went out in 4th place. Nasr, originally
from Lebanon, has appeared at several
other final tables at major tournaments,
although this was his first time to finish
this high at the WSOP. Nasr’s cut of the
action amounted to $60,055.
3rd
Place – A few hands later, Mike
Davis went out when he moved his last
chips in with A-4. Chi Chang had plenty
of chips and called the small raise with
9-7. A seven flopped and Davis – the CEO
of a grocery chain – was sacked as the
third-place finisher. He bagged $68,630
in prize money.
2nd
Place – That left Quinn Do to battle
Chi Chang for the gold bracelet. Most
interesting was the fact that for both
players, this was their first trip ever
to the WSOP. After several events in which
tournament veterans finished high in the
money, this event was certain to have
a rookie winner.
When
heads-up play began, Quinn Do enjoyed
a 2-to-1 chip lead – 630,000 to 315,000.
Limits were 15,000-30,000. An hour later,
Do increased his lead to 3-to-1. Witnessing
the two rivals play was like watching
ice melt. But if Chang’s stack was melting,
Do’s was becoming a giant iceberg. A slow
but steady stream of chips flowed from
Chang’s stack over to Do, until Chang
had enough and was forced to move his
last chips into the pot in a losing battle.
Do’s winning hand was A-7 of clubs, which
flopped a nut flush.
Runner-up
Chi Chang is 43-years old. The early chip
leader normally plays $40-80 cash games.
This was his first appearance at the WSOP.
It was worth a whopping $137,265 in prize
money.
1st
Place – Quinn Do was surrounded
by several supporters, including John
Phan and Liz Lieu. Do later stated that
both Phan and Lieu had given him tournament
advice. Whatever they said, it certainly
worked.
As
Do collected $265,975 for first place,
he snapped on the coveted gold bracelet
awarded to all WSOP champions. “This is
really beautiful,” he said. “I am more
into the bracelet than anything else.”
Afterward,
Quinn Do departed the Rio Pavilion’s tournament
arena and made the long trek back to the
Rio. For Do, the carpeted boulevard was
not that ‘bad beat highway.’ It was instead,
the shining avenue of a new poker champion.
Official Report
by Nolan Dalla – World Series of
Poker Media Director
World
Series of Poker Circuit Director of Operations
– Ken Lambert
World Series of Poker Tournament Director
– John Grooms
Rio Poker Room Manager – Michael
Matts
Rio Poker Tournament Director – Robert
Daily
|
