Tommy Nguyen had every reason to smile today. He came into the day around the middle of the pack with 189k, but while I wasn’t watching the action very closely, every time I checked out stacks during the course of Day 2, Nguyen had the big one.
He was the big leader when I finally got eyes on the game four-handed and I got there just in time to see him turn a set of nines and send Jorge Artiga Pacheco out in 4th place. It was a massive pot that saw Nguyen four-bet the big blind after Mike Farrow opened under the gun and Pacheco three-bet the button.
Only Pacheco called and Nguyen kept firing on every street, putting Pacheco all in on the river. Pacheco called with the top pair of flopped queens but Nguyen set him up and sent him home. Nguyen then proceeded to find massive cooler against Mike Farrow when Farrow’s queens were crushed by his kings to build a 9:2 lead over Mike Leah going into heads up.
That’s when things got a bit absurd. Leah and Nguyen agreed to take a short break, but that break extended quite a bit longer than expected. Nguyen was outside and when he tried to come back in he was carded by security at the front door. His ID was still at the cage after being taken for paperwork processing for a cash over $10k (standard procedure in Alberta casinos) so he was unable to prove his age.
It took around 20 minutes to convince a guard to escort him to the Chrome room, and staff here verified that he was certainly of age, and heads-up in a huge tournament. He took it well and sat back down with a smile. Leah was also a great sport about the long wait, but there was nothing long after that.
Leah and Nguyen sat down for heads up and after a limp-shove-call line starting and ending with Leah, it was tens for Nguyen against ace-ten for Leah. The board ran clean for the tens and Nguyen had his first ring after just a single hand.
This was his first ring, but he’s no stranger to big scores and hardware. He has over $2 million in lifetime earnings, with about a million of that coming from a 2018 Bracelet in the Monster Stack. Interestingly, despite the high earnings, this was just his third live win.
