Main Event Heats up - Down to 30 USA Bitcoin casinos

If you want to be surpised when the Main Event comes on TV, don’t read this. Ok, you’re warned.

The Main Event is heating up, almost down to the final three tables as I’m writing this. In a field of 8,773, mostly no-names, we’re left with, well, mostly no-names. However, some big names are still alive including Allen Cunningham (11th with 2,910,000 chips), European pro Jeffrey Lisandro (13th with 2,550,000 chips), well-known internet pro Eric “Rizen” Lynch (27th with 880,000 chips), and Prahlad Friedman (14th with 2,150,000 chips). For those of you who are unfamiliar with Rizen, check out his statistics on Bitcoin USA Bitcoin casinos. And that’s just on one site - he plays all of the major ones. And if you don’t know who Friedman is, he’s better known in the online world as Spirit Rock and has absolutely dominated the biggest games ($25/50 NL, $50/100 NL) on UltimateBet. In Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book, he writes about Friedman (without identifying him, simply calling him the “Biggest Online Winner”), “I’ve watched and played against him for hundreds of hours. He not only saps the chips, but the very spirit from the rocks in the game. It would be an understatement to say that (Friedman) plays a very sound game. According to the branch of mathematics called game theory, his style is unbeatable.” Pretty high praise from a well-respected pro who decided to profile only seven players in his book - Friedman, Gus Hanson, Dan Harrington, John Juanda, Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson, and Howard Lederer.

The leader of the tournament right now is Jamie Gold with 13,000,000 chips. He’s not famous, but he’s no newbie either with almost $100,000 in career earnings. Some of the bigger names who cashed were Darrell “Gigabet” Dicken (672nd place, $17,000 earnings), Stan Goldstein (621st, $21k), Tony Bloom (512th, $22k), Mark Vos (457th, $26k), Ted Forrest (408th, $31k), Cyndy Violette (400th, $31k), Hoyt Corkins (364th, $35k), Tom McEvoy (371st, $35k), Surinder Sunar (324th, $35k), Kathy Liebert (275th, $39k), Daniel Negreanu (229th, $43k), Joseph Hachem (238th, $43k), Annie Duke (88th, $51k), and Humberto Brenes (36th, $330k).

Gold was absolutely ecstatic, hugging his mom as the crowd chanted, “Gold! Gold! Gold!” He then called his ailing dad and left a message saying, “Believe it or not I won. I love you dad. I hope you’re proud of me.” I hope you’re proud of me? Sounds like Gold’s been trying to please his dad his whole life without much success. Or maybe he’s just really insecure. Either way, that was a bizarre thing to say. Nevertheless, his play the whole night was phenomenal. He played great big stack bitcoin casinos. Maybe he talked too much at the table, but he got most of the players (except for Cunnigham) to do what he wanted them to do. It will be interesting to see how ESPN portrays him - if he’ll be a jackass or a great player. He definitely had some Hellmuth-esque moments where he felt like he was the best player in the world, saying, “I can’t play any better. I can’t play any better than this.” Maybe he’s right - he has the bracelet and the fat check to prove it.