[FeliciaLee]

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I've played some PLO with Pescatore and thought his play was very weak-tight. I also don't think this fold is automatic.

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I missed the first day of this tourney. I read the online reports all afternoon as Max got farther and farther.

Once, he got down to about 5k when the average was maybe 30k. I was worried he was going to bubble, but he doubled through a couple of times and was right back in the game.

On the second day, I drove up to watch him. He was pretty nervous. He told me he'd just started getting into PLO. Since he had a sponsor, now he was able to enter all of those events that he had little experience playing, and weren't before worth entering.

I watched as they went from deep into the money until they got a final table set. Max ranged in stack size, and had some tough opponents. He was glad to have someone cheering him on, I'm sure.

If I remember correctly, he had a rough table. Erik Seidel, Chris Ferguson, Dave Colclough.

He did make it to the final table, and went home to rest.

I watched him the next day until he busted out. He said he never really got anything going on at the final table, and that Josh really dominated play there. He finally took a chance with those queens, but Josh had so many chips that calling with the ace and low cards wasn't a risk for him.

If he did seem weak/tight, then I think that might bode well for his future, since this was his first cash in PLO, first big buy-in, and Mason has always asserted that weak/tight players have the best chance of becoming WCP.

If you noticed, Max seemed to do very well this year at the series. I knew it was going to be his year, and told everyone to watch for him this year.

Although he had some huge personal issues going on at the time (sister just died of cancer, I got diagnosed with cancer, Charlie died of cancer during the series, a nephew of his died during the series unexpectedly), Max still cashed in SIX events! He wasn't even able to play in all of them, due to some of the personal problems he had, events overlapping, and making so many 2nd and 3rd days.

Also, the 10k PLO event, on July 2nd, he managed another cash, 13th place! And this was during one of the bleakest weeks in his life. He was unable to fly home to Italy for his nephew's funeral.

Max may be new to PLO tournament play, but he is definitely no one-hit wonder, and you will be seeing more of him in the future, IMO.

Felicia [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]