High school dropout on brink of $2.3m payday
Chris Oliver says he will buy a big house if he lands the Caribbean Adventure title tomorrow...
| by The Suited Connector |  January, 14th 2011 |
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Above: High school dropout Chris Oliver is about to get rich
Chris Oliver will take a staggering 42 per cent of the chips into tomorrow's final of the PokerStars Carribean Adventure in the Bahamas.
The 21-year-old from Florida, who infuriated his parents when he dropped out of high school to play online poker, has a mammoth stack of 19,670,000 - 13 million more chips than his nearest challenger, San Francisco pro Galen Hall.
'ImDaNuts', as Oliver calls himself, plays online tournaments from just $5 buy-ins up, but in the wake of his staggering success here plans to concentrate on live events. His biggest live cash to date was a round $5,000 at a World Series of Poker side event.
He is already guaranteed $202,000 here, and if he pockets the $2.3million top prize he plans to buy a large house in his native Florida.
The high school dropout is also set to become a TV star - in a first for poker, the final table will be shown on ESPN2 in the United States tomorrow on a one-hour delay with all the players' hole cards visible.
Coverage begins at 5pm on ESPN3.com and then will be simulcast on ESPN2 beginning at 10pm. Viewers outside the United States will be able to watch on PokerStars.tv.
If anyone can chase down Oliver's enormous lead, Galen 'GasparLeMarc' Hall has undoubtedly the best chance.
The 24-year-old (6,435,000) has been a professional poker player for over a year but he started playing poker about ten years ago.
Initially he played Limit Hold'Em but switched to Heads-Up Sit&Gos early on. Nowadays he is an all-round player and also plays PLO/PLO8 and NLHE.
Hall is ranked in the top 50 in the world and last year he turned over about $1 million (around $200,000 profit).
Even so, the PCA payout is huge for Hall and this is by far his best result. He said he hadn’t even looked at the payouts yet because “the most important thing is to just win it.”
If he does, unlike his rival Oliver, he plans to put the money an academic future and plans on going to Stanford University in 2012. Hall is also involved in the start-up venture Identify.com and his ultimate goal is to start a business of his own.
After a very strong start, former World Champion Chris Moneymaker, 35, busted yesterday in 11th place for $130,000. The 2003 WSOP Main Event Winner lost a big chunk of his stack to Galen Hall when the younger man flopped a set of tens.
2011 PCA Main Event
Final Table
Seat 1. Mike Sowers (USA) 3,685,000
Seat 2. Max Weinberg USA 3,350,000
Seat 3. Chris Oliver (USA) 19,670,000
Seat 4. Bolivar Palacios (Panama) 2,445,000
Seat 5. Sam Stein (USA) 5,855,000
Seat 6. Anton Ionel (Romania) 3,530,000
Seat 7. Philippe Plouffe (Canada) 1,555,000
Seat 8. Galen Hall (USA) 6,435,000
