 Starting with 10.2 million chips, Craig Marquis has the second shortest stack on the table. However, having about 4 times as much as Kelly Kim, and being over 40 big blinds deep, this 23 year-old from Arlington, Texas, still has a decent chance of winning the event.
Craig's story is one like many others, he started playing poker at college and dropped out to play poker. He has been playing mostly online cash games and has only about 4 years of experience now. However, on the pokertable, he has shown that he is a fast learner and doesn't get impressed easily. With his laid back and easy going demeanor on and off the table, he is well respected by the crowd. Having learned a lot from players like David "Raptor" Benefield and Tom "Durrr" Dwan. He did have his success online, when he decided to start playing poker seriously early 2007. He managed to grind up from microstakes to midstakes and high stakes and even the occasional high stakes $500/$1000!
Like many others, the Main Event was his last chance to save his so far depressing World Series. He entered a total of 19 events, and up to the Main Event, he only cashed in one of these. Apart from that, he did have 2 cashes in 2007, both WSOP-events, but so far, his biggest cash is $16,133 and his total prizemoney is just over $35,000 , which means he's down quite a bit, up to this Main Event.
After this final table, he stated he will give a part of his winnings to his family, who mean a lot to him. If he wins the event, his goal is to be a good ambassador to the pokerworld as he feels that hasn't been done the last few years. His life after this final table will look a lot different for him. Instead of grinding 100k hands a month, he says he'll go back to about 30k and take a lot of time off to pursue his dreams. A decent amount of his prizemoney has already been spent on a brand new, fully packed, Audi S5.
Getting into the final table has not been that easy for him. When the Main Event was down to 10 players, only one had to get knocked out. Everybody started playing more tight, and Marquis was one of the only players trying to win more chips instead of waiting for the knockout. The very first hand 10-handed, he raised to half a million. Ylon Schwartz reraised to 1.6 million and Marquis re-reraised to 4.5 million, about half his stack at that point. Schwartz thought for a moment before moving all-in, and Marquis folded after long consideration. Schwartz then showed his pocket aces and Marquis knew he was close to be in the least favorable spot of the evening. Not much later, he found himself all-in with   to the   of Dean Hamrick, but with a runner-runner flush, he managed to suck out, later knocking out Hamrick with QQ vs AJ!
Craig Marquis is still living his dream, and with his 10.2 million chips on the final table, we'll see how far that takes him.
The November Nine consist of:
Dennis Phillips - 26,295,000
Ivan Demidov - 24,400,000
Scott Montgomery - 19,690,000
Peter Eastgate - 18,375,000
Ylon Schwartz - 12,525,000
Darus Suharto - 12,520,000
David 'Chino' Rheem - 10,230,000
Craig Marquis - 10,210,000
Kelly Kim - 2,620,000 |
Sweden. Oct 16 2008 15:37. Posts 6499
