A player failing to show up to play a waiting chip stack in a multi-day poker tournament is one of those occasional happenings that always draws a bit of extra interest. Once in a while, the reason is lamentable: the player oversleeps or parties a bit too hard and by the time he wakes, his chips have been blinded off. More frequently, unfortunately, a stack is abandoned because of an emergency or medical situation that occurred with little or no warning.
That's what happened to well-known Florida pro Nick Yunis on Wednesday, although this story turned out to have a very happy ending. Yunis is a native of Chile -- he's that country's all-time tounament winnings leader -- but has made his home in southern Florida for many years. He's been playing in recent weeks in the WPT-affiliated Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open in Hollywood, Florida, near Miami.
Yunis even won one of the preliminary SHRPO events nearly two weeks ago, and he was poised to make another deep run in Event #36, $1,100 No-Limit Hold'em Triple Stack. He began Day 2 11th of 105 returning players, with everyone remaining already guaranteed a payout in the event. Except Yunis was a no-show as play resumed, and as happens in poker tournaments, his chips were unbagged and stacked in front of his seat, with the emptied bag draped over the back of his waiting chair.
But where was Yunis? It took a couple of hours for players and staff at Seminole Hard Rock to learn what had happened:
Meanwhile, Yunis continued to make money in the SHRPO event without being present. Though his stack was slowly being blinded off, he was still outlasting most of the shorter stacks who busted in the first levels of Day 2.
Veteran tourney reporter Ryan Lucchesi, who was covering the SHRPO event, made note of Yunis' stack backing its way up the payout list:
EVENT 36: NICK YUNIS MAKES THE EASY CALL
$1,100 Triple Stack No-Limit Hold’em (Re-Entry)
Prize Pool: $798,310 | Structure | Payouts
Level 19: 5,000/10,000 with a 10,000 ante
Players Remaining: 63 of 823
We were starting to get a little worries when popular pro Nick Yunis did not show up for his Day 2. He was stacked big coming into the restart but he was getting (slowly) blinded down.
We should have checked the Twitters.
Congrats to Nick and the family! We’ll watch your stack for you.
As it turned out, Yunis's empty seat outlasted two-thirds of the event's in-the-money players. Though two of the money spots were still posted as "Unclaimed" following the event's finish, it appeared that Yunis's stack finally reached zero for a 35th-place finish worth $3,850, after surviving seven pay jumps along the way. It wasn't the $99,427 payday picked up by Johnny Bromberg, but it could've been worse.
Yunis spent part of Wednesday responding to the many dozens of congratulatory messages sent his way. PokerOrg also offers congratulations to the Yunis family, which is one larger now with Matthew James's very poker-themed arrival.
Featured image Haley Hintze
