NAPT Venetian Won by Tom Marchese

25 Feb 2010

Tom Marchese, a 22 year old professional poker player from New Jersey in the USA has won the PokerStars NAPT Venetian and collected the first prize of $827,000.  In second place was the 21 year old Sam Stein.

Tom’s nickname is "Kingsofcards". He normally plays online cash games where he has a reputation of doing very well. He took up poker three years ago when he was still a student and eventually stopped being a student to concentrate on poker. He has won around $350,000 in online tournaments and before the NAPT had only once cashed in a live tournament, in fact just over a month ago. That was in the Borgata Winter Open, a $3,300 no limit Hold’em, where he finished third.

He started the final table with 2,370,000 chips which put him in fourth place. The chip leader was the second place finisher Sam Stein who had 6,145,000 chips.

Once everybody else had departed and the final heads up began, Stein was ahead in chips by a considerable margin having over twice as many chips as Marchese. Initially Stein was able to build an even greater lead but then there was a hand that proved to be a turning point.

This happened when Stein called a Marchese raise. The flop was K-S; 6-D; 5-H. After Marchese bet and Stein called bet the turn card was 4-S. Again Marchese bet and again Stein called followed by a river card of 10-C. With little hesitation Marchese went all in. Stein deliberated for some time, but eventually came to the conclusion that his pocket cards of J-D; 5-D which gave him almost bottom pair, was enough and he called. It was a brave move but a bad one. Marchese showed his K-S; 9-H and although a king pair was nothing to write home about, it was enough.

Now in the lead, Marchese was able to make it stick and with a semblance of déjà vu it was not long before Stein again called Marchese all in only to be again disappointed. Those two hands were enough to cost Stein the tournament and he had to settle for the second prize of $522,306.