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The Shark Is in Action at WSOP

Humberto Brenes Is Having a Blast

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The Shark and Humberto BrenesHumberto Brenes is giving Spanish lessons this week.

"How do you say shark in Spanish?" he asked ESPN's cameras the other day. And no, Mr. Scholar, who taught my ninth-grade Spanish class, it's not "tiburon."

According to Brenes, everybody should know that the English-to-Spanish translation of "shark" is "Humberto."

During the tournament, the Poker Prince of Costa Rico has protected his cards with a novelty chip protector made to look like a shark that Seth Weinger, the owner and creator of a line of markers called Poker Faces, gave to Brenes at the Gaming Expo last week.

The shark has followed Brenes from table to table. He's started calling it his friend. He even says the shark's making decisions for him, despite the clear rule that calls for only one player to a hand. He has said the words "chomp, chomp, chomp" over and over again this past week while building his stack, smiling and laughing all the way.

Brenes, who has been playing tournament poker for many years now and has many cashes (he cashed in seven events at this year's WSOP alone), has a real chance to make it to the final table again even though he sits below average with about $600,000 in chips.

And that would be phenomenal for Weinger, who debuted his product at this year's WSOP. He created his line of chip markers, which feature 14 different characters that are supposed to represent different kinds of poker personalities, to fund buy-ins to major poker tournaments, he said. "It was just a stupid idea that I thought would be a fun thing to do," he said.

He's thrilled to have a high-profile player like Brenes enjoy his product so much, and expects the footage filmed will help his small business in a major way.

"He's the perfect guy to have playing with it," Weinger said.

Brenes just spent most of Sunday playing at the featured table, so people everywhere will be able to see the shark in action. They'll also get to see Brenes play some poker.