2024 Maryland State Poker Championship
Maryland LIVE! Highlights
Day: all
Pennsylvania's Daniel Bellis outlasted Michael Lavin to be the last online qualifier standing in the $600 Kickoff Event to win a coveted Gold Pass package to NAPT Las Vegas in November.
Bellis had his first live cash earlier this year in Las Vegas and is now guaranteed a payday of at least $5,049 as he heads to dinner break with 14 players remaining.
You can read about Lavin's 18th-place elimination here, and it wasn't pretty.
Don't forget that there are two more Gold Passes up for grabs in Maryland, including in the currently underway 6-Max Championship.
There are just two online qualifiers remaining in the $600 Kickoff Event in the fight for a Gold Pass package to NAPT Las Vegas that will be the last qualifier standing.
With just three tables remaining, Daniel Bellis sits with a healthy stack of 37 big blinds as he looks to outlast Michael Lavin, who is down to 16 big blinds. The two battled at the same table for several hours before Lavin was eventually moved to another table.
The suspense is on and you can follow the action through the PokerNews live updates.
No "PokerNews curse" confirmed? Bracelet winner and radiologist Lara Eisenberg, who PokerNews talked to earlier in the series, is currently chip leading the $600 Kickoff Event with 2.3 million in chips.
Eisenberg built up a thick wall of purple chips before rearranging her stack into a pointy tower.
Read more about Eisenberg as she makes a deep run here in Maryland.
The $400 6-Max Championship is underway and will provide players a chance to at winning a Gold Pass package to NAPT Las Vegas in November.
There are four PokerStars ambassadors in the field as Mystery Bounties: chess champion Jen Shahade, acclaimed author Maria Konnikova, and PokerStars Team Pro streamers Arlie Shaban and David Kaye.
Any player who knocks out one of these ambassadors will get to open a briefcase filled with a mystery prize. Only one of the four briefcases contains a coveted Gold Pass, so the suspense is tangible.
PokerNews will keep readers updated as the mystery bounties are claimed. Meanwhile, take a look at the coverage of the final day of the $600 Kickoff Event.
In the 1970s, long before the Poker Boom, online qualifier Trevor Tracy was introduced to poker in the same sort of dingy backroom games that iconic players like Doyle Brunson and Amarillo Slim were becoming legends in.
While these games were in Arizona and not Texas, and Tracy was a chip-runner, not a player, they instilled in Tracy a deep passion for the game that's stayed with him for nearly half a century.
“My neighbor used to run all the illegal poker rooms in Phoenix back in the ‘70s," Tracy told PokerNews. "So I was chipboy when I was like 10 years old. So I’ve been around poker for 45 years. The neighbor was a gangster who owned like ten poker houses in Phoenix."
"It was cool. My allowance was like $2 a week and I’d make $100 a night there. It was great.”
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These days, Tracy, now based in Pittsburgh, travels the live circuit and plays everywhere from his home state of Arizona to up north in Ontario. He started playing online a year ago and "play(s) a lot of satellites," which is how he won his seat into the $600 Kickoff Event at the PokerStars 2024 Maryland State Poker Championship.
He's only played at Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland once before but it proved to be a fruitful trip.
“It was like the first tournament on the East Coast — this and the Borgata. I ended up chopping it, so I’ve had good luck here so far.”
Tracy built up a stack of Day 1f before losing a big pot as the night wound down — “I just took a big hit for 100k" — and eventually falling before bag time.
The fight is on for five online qualifiers who advanced to Day 2 of the $600 Kickoff Event as they look to be the last qualifier standing to win a Gold Pass package to NAPT Las Vegas in November.
New Jersey's Michael Lavin leads the way among the returning qualifiers as he looks to add to his $505,922 in live earnings. Behind him are Greg Jackson (254,000), Daniel Bellis (70,000) Rahul Agarwal (62,000) and Joseph Weaver (59.000).
Follow the PokerNews live updates of the Kickoff Event to sweat with the qualifiers.
Don't forget that there will be two more Gold Passes awarded in Maryland, including later today in the $400 6-Max Championship.
