Operzby Stern never planned to participate in the 2015 World Series poker main event. Now he has secured more than $1 million and will start his final ping pong at the second chip position when he returns to Las Vegas to downgrade to the championship on Nov. 9. Yes, that’s right. A man who rarely plays at the $10,000 main event can finish nearly $7.7 million richer.
After missing out on last year’s World Series altogether, Stern was again fascinated by this year’s big event, the Colosus, the Million Air Maker, and the Monster Stack, which brought together 36,841 participants for three consecutive weekends. He started the summer with Colosus’ cash and finished in 1,085th place with $3,009, and after going bankrupt at the Million Air Maker, he decided to jump into the 3,000-dollar hold-and-hands race to finish in 18th place with $9,501.
Between the tournaments, Stern cashed in a few satellites. And while he was able to sell some of the winning tournament rammer to players who wanted to compete in other WSOP tournaments, he returned to Israel with seven chips worth $500 to participate in the WSOP tournament.
So he was sitting in Israel, about 7,500 miles from the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. The $3,500 worth of WSOP flamers will become obsolete once the main event is registered.
He had planned to sell the Grammer to friends who would travel to Las Vegas to participate in the main event, but by the time he got there, everyone who knew who he was going to play had already traveled. He considered shipping them to Las Vegas, but in the end, he decided to compete in the world’s most prestigious poker competition for the fifth time in his life. 파워볼게임<
There were other factors that led to Stern’s return for the main event. He heard the Israeli anthem played for Ethan Raviv’s bracelet celebration, and that was the case even after Raviv won the $1,500 limitless holdover event. After coming home, he stayed up all night to watch Timur Margolin finish second in the $2,500 event on WSOP.com livestream. And he was excited about the main event when players at one of his tournament tables began to deal with the ace in the first hand of the main event and discuss how to play if there was an all-in bet before them.
But if he could sell the rammers of all his contests, would he have gone back to Las Vegas for the main event?
“Good question,” says Stern. “I don’t think we’ll know. Thank God.
“Ultimately everything in me screamed, ‘Go back, go back and play.’
Stern became interested in poker in 2006. In his first year of playing the game, he played the final round in 2006 in an unlimited $1,500 hold-and-hold event, finishing third with $39,530.
“I don’t know if I knew for sure what I was doing,” Stern says of his first final meeting experience.
Stern has worked on the game for the past decade, but it has never been a full-time performance. He runs his own business, developing software, researching and developing for startups, and consulting investors about potential projects. Although he had a “real job” when he was young, he started his business when he was “20 or 21,” and he enjoys the flexibility of working self-employed.
“During the day I could go play the piano, go to the movies, or just go and play a poker tournament if I want,” he says. “In a way, poker players are their own boss, their CEO, they can travel to a tournament, go on vacation whenever they want, and happen whenever they want. But unfortunately – maybe very lucky – I do have a real job. But I like the possibility of this kind of adjustment.”
Stern, who takes the game seriously but is not an expert, is very careful about the decisions he makes at the table. He considers a lot of information when making decisions, and as a result, he was criticized by many people in the poker media ahead of the final table.
“Sometimes you make a play that you realize later, and if you took a little more time you could have seen a better play,” Stern says. “Everybody is different and I may not be the quickest thinker, but when there’s a lot of money at stake, I learned the hard way that it’s important to take a moment to solve a puzzle so that I don’t feel so bad, just in case the play is proven wrong.