WSOP.com Event #32: No Limit Hold'em Championship

One player who has been doing quite well on playing online in recent years is bracelet winner Daniel "centrfieldr" Lupo, 37, of West Milford, New Jersey. You might recall in 2019, Lupo topped a 1,767-entry field to win the WSOP.com Online $500 NLH Turbo Deepstack for $145,274 and a gold bracelet. Last year, he added a ring to his résumé by taking down the WSOP.com Online Circuit Event #3: $320 NLH 6-Max for $32,595 and a month later won the WSOP.com $100,000 GTD Sunday for $50,715.

PokerNews caught up with Lupo, who went to NJIT for Architecture and baseball, to ask him about poker, which he squeezes in between working for an Architecture firm in Bridgewater specializing in single-family residential and smaller commercial projects and his family, which includes three kids ages 2-5 and his supportive wife Laura.

PokerNews: When and how did you learn to play poker?

Lupo: I started playing/learning in college during the Rounders and Moneymaker boom with a bunch of the baseball guys. Within a year I found myself hosting games at college, at home on breaks and basically anywhere I could find or make a game. I didn't play much online early on, regrettably.

What sort of poker do you play these days?

Mostly online MTTs playing like three sessions per week on average with buy-ins typically from $50 to $1k with the occasional $2-$3k buy in for a big event. I average around 500-600 MTTs a month despite not playing full time, I tend to put in a lot of volume when I'm on. The games are mostly NLH and some PLO MTTs, but love when StarsNJ runs a series as they run a fun 8-Game MTT with a bunch of other mixed variants.

What's it like to play poker while raising young children?

It's been a constant evolution. I could probably write a book about all the highs and lows and life adjustments I've had or chose to make. It gives me a lot of inspiration to succeed while also adding some weight to my losses as it's like 'not only was I way from my kids for all of Sunday afternoon but I lost (insert obnoxious Sunday schedule cost here)'.

What are some of your poker goals?

Try and win everything I play. Actually, my biggest current goal is trying to optimize my MTT game selection. Since quarantine began the schedules have been exploding site to site and while it's been great, with lots of new players and lots of live players playing online it has also drastically increased my average buy-ins and session costs as well as the field size which further increases variance.

I'm trying to optimize the balance of table quantity and expected value vs individual session costs and the variance that comes with it. Having an average buy-in of $250 adds up pretty quickly when it's spread across 60+ entries on a Sunday. My biggest ongoing and long-term goal is to win enough to help my family live comfortably.

Lupo is in action today looking to make a run at his second gold bracelet.

Matthew "BraceletHUNT" Hunt raised to 1,150 from the hijack. Two players called.

The flop came the    . Joseph "melonhead" Bartholdi bet 1,350. One player folded and Hunt called.

The turn was the  , both players checked it to the   river. Hunt bet 6,346. Bartholdi raised to 19,940, Hunt snap called and showed the    for the nut flush to beat the    of Bartholdi who bought back in.

Matthew "BraceletHUNT" Hunt	54,796	26,777
Joseph "melonhead" Bartholdi	20,000	11,600

On Saturday, July 24, the WSOP Summer Online Circuit continued alongside the bracelet events. The ninth tournament was the $320 buy-in Event #9: $100,000 GTD NLH Double Stack, which attracted 305 runners who rebought 165 times. The 470-entry field resulted in a $141,000 prize pool that was paid out to the top 80 finishers.

Among those to cash were Daniel "stayactive" Chan (10th - $1,903.50), Frank "Spaghettiii" Marasco (17th - $1,142.10), Ryan "hagzzz021" Hagerty (22nd - $888.30), Harrison "harrisond33" Dobin (30th - $789.60), Matt "berkey11_s4y" Berkey (38th - $705), and Kristen "krissyb24" Bicknell (52nd - $549.90).

In the end, it was Justin "LappyPoker" Lapka besting Jake "nattydaddy24" Hernandez in heads-up play to win a $24,111 top prize and his first gold ring. The win came a week after Lapka took down the 2021 WSOP Online Event #17: $400 NLH 8-Max for $75,371 and his first gold bracelet.

WSOP Summer Online Circuit Event #9 Final Table Results

Last week, PokerNews had the pleasure to follow around Phil Hellmuth for a day as he competed in the 2021 WSOP Online in quest of his record-extending 16th gold bracelet..

The "Poker Brat" showed us his home away from home at the ARIA Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and puts in an online poker session on his tablet - not just in his suite, but also in the gym.

One of the most common names among the top finishers in WSOP.com high-stakes tournaments is "RubberFist." That one belongs to Matt Stout, as long-standing a tournament presence as any dating back to his days as "all_in_at420," the nom de guerre under which he's racked up almost $4 million in cashes.

A six-time WSOP Circuit ring winner, Stout has been killing it on the virtual felt in recent years and is in action today.

First, in 2019 he added a third ring to his collection, taking down Event #8: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em High Roller 6-Max for $47,330 in a field of 177 runners.

Then, he crushed it even harder in March 2020. He shipped Event #2: $215 No-Limit Hold'em Monster Stack for $43,286. After a sixth-place finish in another $1K six-max event, Stout tasted victory again in Event #11: No-Limit Hold'em - BIG $500, banking $63,234. Along with three smaller cashes, that was enough to secure Casino Champion honors and make good on his pre-series prediction to his wife.

Stout, the founder of the Charity Series of Poker (CSOP), continued churning out solid results with eight cashes during last year's domestic bracelet series, though none saw him run particularly deep.

More recently, Stout captured his sixth ring last month when he won the WSOP.com Summer Online Circuit Event #5: $50,000 GTD PLO Big $500 6-Max for $13,955.

He'll try to keep things rolling this year and maybe even make a run at his first bracelet.

Three players saw a     flop for 1,800 a piece and Viacheslav "Innstillness" Fentisov led out for 3,000 from under the gun.

Only Kevin "StonesFan" Ripple called from middle position and the two players watched the   pair the board on the turn.

Fentisov fired out 9,750 and then called the 24,648 all in raise from Ripple.

Kevin "StonesFan" Ripple:   
Viacheslav "Innstillness" Fentisov:   

Fentisov held the better pocket pair and the   river didn't change a thing as Ripple re-entered the tournament.

Viacheslav "Innstillness" Fentisov	80,452
Kevin "StonesFan" Ripple	20,000	0

For each of the 2021 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Online bracelet events, either Jeff Platt or PokerNews will be streaming early play up to the final table, which will then air exclusively on the PokerNews Twitch Channel. Early action of this event is streaming now, so be sure to tune in to see who walks away with the WSOP gold bracelet!

"I am thrilled to team up with PokerNews to present coverage of the 2021 WSOP Online," said Platt, who is a co-host of the PokerNews Podcast. "We learned last year that the prestige of bracelet events draws an incredibly passionate audience on Twitch. I can't wait to interact with that audience again as we crown poker's newest champions."

Tune Into Jeff Platt's Twitch here!

Three players went to a flop that came the     after they all committed 1,050 to the middle. It checked around to the   turn.

Mike "Cookies" Linster led bet 2,550 into two opponents, the first folded and Matthew "DirtyVladBoy" Beyerlein raised to 8,850, Linster three-bet to 15,150, Beyerlein four-bet to make Linster put in his last few chips and the cards were revealed.

Beyerlein had the   , Linster had the    for a set over set situation. the river came the   and Linster was forced to re-buy.

Matthew "DirtyVladBoy" Beyerlein	39,428	19,428
Mike "Cookies" Linster	20,000

Players are on a five-minute break.