E-WSOP Dinner Break Musings

PokerStars shine on the EPT

I like the dinner break. I mean, sure, it's free food (usually quite good), but it's more than that. It's "I got beat set-over-set" stories. It's "I beat somebody set-over-set" stories. Oh, and it's a chance to find my next Cinderella story.



That's Kevin Fangerow from Chicago, Illinois, USA (aka fangs22). His dad and co-workers don't really believe he's here. They think if he IS here, he might be losing internal organs to wild bandits in European back alleys. Oh, and if the fates of Cinderella are conscious, they'll make this man the next poker hero.

See, Kevin, just 23 years old, is living an odd story. He's played a bit with his friends and he's played a bit online (by his own admission, losing a little much in the $5/$10 NL game on Stars). In fact, it was in the middle of an online tilt-session that he thought he'd see what those Frequent Player Point qualifiers were all about.

So, he bought into one with his FPP points and won an entry into an FPP super satellite. The top two placers got trips to this fine city for this fine tournament. The winners notification said he needed to log on at a desginated time for his chance to win.

So, he logged on at the designated time and found...well, he found that his Central-Timed brain hadn't considered the tournament times were, well, Eastern Standard Time. He'd been blinded off for a full hour.

But, not one to give up, Kevin played on. And, lo and behold, he made the final table...just in time for his internet service to crash.

In a frantic frenzy of phonecalls to his ISP, he discovered there was no hope. The entire ISP server had crashed. So, Kevin turned off his computer.

Yes, the man who wouldn't give up turned off his computer and drove like he was on some Chicago Autobahn and screamed into his friend's house.

"Log off your computer," he said.

"But I'm playing a $50 tournament," his friend protested.

"Log. Off. Your. Computer."

I'd go on, but you see where this is going.



Kevin is sitting about ten feet from me right now, chatting up his table, and protecting his chip stack (he's been up and down all day and sits right now at around 11,000 in chips).

Yes, folks, this is how it goes. We're on Level 5 now. Twenty-two tables remain in what is sure to be one very long night.

We'll be back from the Concord Card Casino in a while.