No Deal for Final Table Players During PokerStars $1 Million GuaranteeEric "Rizen" Lynch Takes Home All the First-Prize Money |
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Sunday was a good day for the man known as Rizen in the world of online poker.
Eric Lynch, who plays as Rizen on many of the popular online poker sites, won PokerStars.com's $1 million-guaranteed tournament Sunday, winning $156,815. It was the biggest win the online pro landed so far.
The Sunday $1 million guaranteed tourney takes place each week. What was unique about Lynch's win is that no deals were made at the final table. Lee Jones, PokerStars.com's poker room manager, said he can't be sure the last time a big-money tournament at his site finished without a deal. He thinks Greg Raymer was involved.
Lynch said no one at the final table to even talking about making a deal. When it got down to the last two players, Rizen and gardner52, it took almost 100 hands for the contest to be decided.
The difference between first and second was $70,490. The difference between first and third was more than $100,000.
Even if players wanted to make a deal, Lynch would have politely declined. It's his policy not to chop.
"When you chop, you either take second place and you feel good taking second place, or you take first place and you feel bad that you could've taken it all," Lynch says.
The 27-year-old former software engineer (he still freelances occasionally) quit his job only three months ago to focus solely on poker. He treats poker playing as a job, schedules himself at least two days off a week, and pretty much plays 8-hour days.
He plays mostly $100-plus buy-in tourneys and has had three cashes for $40,000 or more within the past six months. He says Sunday's win only represents about 15 percent of his total winnings since he started playing serious about three years ago. It's no wonder he quit his job.
"It's been a very nice roll," he says.
To top it off, he's about to become a dad for the second time. His firstborn is 16 months old. Lynch started playing poker three years ago when some work buddies invited him to a game. He says he played horribly, but ended up winning. It encouraged him to deposit $50 at PartyPoker.com. Again, he says he played horribly, but got a lucky enough times to hook him.
He then bought a few books (he says he has about 15 in his collection), used the Internet and its many poker forums to study, "and then it just went from there."
"There's so much great material out there that you can get for free or relatively cheap," Lynch says. "Really there's no excuse not to go out and use those materials to improve your game."
Lynch has played in two World Poker Tour events, and although he failed to cash, the experience - and the confidence boost - he got from them were worth plenty.
He's now even providing material to budding players himself through his blog, rizenpoker.blogspot.com. He plans on playing more big buy-in live tournaments in the future, but only if he can get into them through satellites. He already has his World Series of Poker seat locked up (he won his seat through PokerStars), and he'll probably play in several of the smaller WSOP events this year.
If you see him at the final table, don't even bothering asking him to chop. It's against his policy.
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