Pascale Elsair stood and watched adoringly as her newfound celebrity boyfriend Neil Blumenfield signed autographs and posed for pictures with poker fans from all over the world. He picked up a few chips by three-bet shoving on the next hand, then added a few more with back-to-back pots a couple of deals later. McKeehen’s Ace-Ten bested Beckley’s pocket fours, when a ten came on the flop, giving McKeehen a pair of tens, and Beckley couldn’t improve on the turn or river card.
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McKeehen thought for several moments before calling and showed king-10 for the winning hand.
One of the three will prevail at the final table of the World Series of Poker tonight at the Penn & Teller Theater inside the Rio to win $7,683,346 and the world championship bracelet.
“It was just my days for three days in a row”. He played great, he ran great, and you can’t overcome that combination. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best-known poker players to the Horseshoe Casino for a single tournament, with a set start and stop time, and a victor determined by secret ballot.
His run at the final table proved that you don’t have to be a 20-something to make a deep run in the Main Event and keeps the hope alive for amateurs that still believe that “Anyone Can Win” at the World Series of Poker. It’s a grueling multi-day poker marathon that whittled down the competition from 6,420 entries at $10,000 each to nine players, all already guaranteed at least $1 million each.
After much deliberation, staring and literal hand-wringing as McKeehen shuffled 7 million worth of chips in his hands, McKeehen called showing he held a pair of kings. By the end of Monday, he had more than 128 million chips, more than three times as much as the man nearest him.
Incidentally, the player McKeehan beat in that final was Marlton, New Jersey’s Josh Beckley, who’s only 24 and went to Drexel. “I had an idea that he was a great guy, but because I’m always wrong about guys”, she laughed.
Neil Blumenfield, a 61-year-old recreational player from San Francisco, was the other finalist to advance to the last day.
Blumenfield is a successful small-stakes tournament player in California and Reno and entered the Main Event with a little less than $45,000 in lifetime WSOP earnings, thanks mostly to his 285th-place finish in the 2012 Main Event.
“There’s actually a lot of similarities between startup software and poker”. In both cases only the top 10% cash and among that 10% only the top one or two make any serious money. That’s just why, in his apparent “normalness”, McKeehen truly represents poker players everywhere.
Following Blumenfield’s bust out, the tournament was down to its final two competitors: Josh Beckley and McKeehen.
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Michalski is a freelancer reporting from Las Vegas.
