Travellin
Frank Gary, a former software engineer from Ft. Meyers, Florida won’t be complaining about rising gas prices for a while now thanks to his win in Event #41 ($1,500 Mixed Hold’em) Wednesday morning.
 
A year ago the 42-year-old sold his technology company, and decided that after watching poker on television and growing tired of poker on the Internet that he would travel the country in a motorhome in search of some of the country’s best poker games. Prior to his visit to the World Series of Poker he made stops at several WSOP Circuit events across the country picking up a best finish of 19th in a WSOP Circuit event at Caesars Indiana.

Today’s action began with 29-year-old Mats Gavatin as the chip leader with 405,000 chips. Gavatin’s lead was short lived and after the first couple of hands Nick Binger, younger brother of Michael Binger took over the chip lead. Over the next three hours of play Binger would go on to single-handedly eliminate the first six players at the final table including Gavatin. Through his incredible efforts in steamrolling the table, Binger found himself holding 1.4 million of the 2.2 million chips on play.

Once the table was down to three the play changed drastically and this tournament that once looked like it was all but Binger’s to win became the tournament that no one wanted to win. Joining Binger in three-handed action were 22-year-old Jonathan “Tex” Tamyo and Gary. With none of the three players remaining ever experiencing final table glory, each player had difficulty mustering up a knockout punch when they found themselves with the chip lead. Binger had an enormous lead of over 1 million chips. Little by little however, Tamayo won small hand after small hand and cut the lead to only 250,000 after only one hour. The next hour of play saw Binger’s lead evaporate completely   with Tamayo taking the lead and Gary waking up to take second spot away from Binger, which is where they stood as play headed into the dinner break.

After dinner, the lead would swap hands on several occasions which each of the three players getting a taste of the lead on multiple occasions, while at the same time each player also found themselves holding down the cellar on the same number of occasions. Tamayo was finally able to give Binger a decisive blow on this following hand from the official WSOP updates:

"Limit Hold'em: Frank Gary has the button and folds. Nick Binger raises from the small blind and Jonathan Tamayo re-raises out of the big blind. Binger re-raises, making it four bets. Tamayo caps the action and Binger calls. The flop is 2h-10d-7h and Binger and Tamayo get all in for Binger's last 69,000. Binger: 3s-3d Tamayo: Qs-Qc. The turn is the 10C and Binger will need a three on the river to stay alive. As the railbirds cheer for a three to pop off, the river is the Js and Binger is eliminated in third place."

Heads-up play saw Tamayo begin with a dominating 2-1 chip lead over Gary. With the glow of the bracelet sitting at center of the table both players were seemingly nervous with the crown of their first  WSOP victory only four feet away. Gary took advantage of Tamayo’s attempt at the final knockout when “Tex” went all in with his Js-10s. In doing so he ran into Gary’s A-8 and when they board showed an ace and an eight, Gary had doubled up to pull even with Tamayo. 
 
Once again the lead would be bounced back and forth a couple of more times until Gary took control of the match when his pocket nines made a full house to demolish Tamayo’s ace-high straight. Upon seeing that his hand was no good, Tamayo rose from his seat, did a half lap around the table and threw his hat in disgust. With Tamayo on the ropes, Gary delivered the final blow, eliminating the desperately short Tamayo.
 
With the money won from this event, Gary plans on investing the money in non poker related activities. He intends on participating in Event #51 ($1,500 H.O.R.S.E.) event on Sunday. After that, he will head to Phoenix to spend some quality time with his family.
 
For complete results from Event #41 visit the WSOP results page.