The Poor Shall Become Rich
We're seated near the featured table, and there's a particularly friendly gent sitting right in front of us. His name is Alex Rich, and he was the victim of an early crippling. During the second level, he ran pocket queens into pocket kings to lose all but 1,200 of his chips... but he wasn't going down without a fight.
Rich had nursed that all the way back close to 20,000 when he got mixed up in another pot for his tournament life a moment ago — something he's grown accustomed to here on Day 1c. We caught up with the action after the flop was already out on board, and Rich was all in for his last 15,500 chips. He found action in two places, and he turned back to lament, "I might be going home here." With the betting action closed, the cards were turned up, and the news was good for our hero. Rich's had flopped a straight, and he was in the lead. The other players showed and respectively, and Rich was suddenly two cards from a big triple up.
The turn was a blank, but the river wasn't so kind. It could have been worse, though; it was the that peeled off the deck to split the pot in half between Rich and the other player with the king-high straight.
Chopping up the third player's chips moved Rich up to about 28,000, and he just flashed us a smile as he dragged another little pot to rebound back over his 30,000-chip starting stack for the first time in a long time. It's been quite a day for him so far.