Top 2010 Poker Player Stories – #4 Tom Marchese

Tom Marchese had a magnificent year, and finished as CardPlayer Player of the Year in 2010

I recognize the fact that I’ve been lagging on getting these stories up.  It’s been two weeks since my last post on Pablosplace, and really there is no excuse why I couldn’t finish the December Countdown of the Top 2010 Poker Player Stories in the month of December other than laziness.  So here we are at the second week of January, and life is settling down enough to the point that I’m going to blog again.  But before I get to talk about the things going on in my life, I want to complete this series.  So I say “hang on” to all of you that want to hear about the Pablosplace White Elephant gift exchange night, The recent Team7Deuce journey to the Bicycle Casino, and my biggest poker tournament cash to date.  I’ll get to those.  But for now, I want to get back to wrapping up the last four stories of 2010, because they’re worth telling.

At the Borgata Winter Open in January, there probably wasn’t a soul at the tables that had heard of the name Tom Marchese.  But slowly he racked up a chip stack en route to finishing in 3^rd place in the $3,300 No Limit Hold’em Championship Event, and would book a $190,027 score.  Full Tilt Poker pro Jeff Madsen would win the event outright for a $625k payday and get all of the accolades, and deservedly so.  But what nobody realized was that the 3^rd place finisher in this event was going to outdistance every other player in the world with performances that continued to turn heads at every stop that Marchese made.

Marchese’s signature tournament of the year came just 3 weeks later in Las Vegas as the North American Poker Tour made a stop at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino.  The $5,000 No Limit Hold’em Main Event was bubbled by Andrew ‘LuckyChewey’ Lichtenberger, and also featured “Miami” John Cernuto.  But it was Marchese that would find a victory in the tournament and book a win on his second career live tournament final table.  The 872 player field drew a prize pool of more than $4 million, and Marchese took another $827,648 pushing him over the $1 million earning mark in 2010 by the time that February was closed out.   But this was just the beginning for Marchese, who had now amassed the bankroll to make a push for becoming the player of the year.

In March, Marchese finished 4^th at the $5,000 Wynn Classic, then in April finished in 4^th again at the £25,000 High Roller Event at the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo.  Marchese cashed twice at the 2010 World Series of Poker, including a 6^th place finish in the $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em Championship.  After the WSOP, Marchese found two more final tables at main events, first at the PokerStars.net Empire State Hold’em Championships with another 4^th place finish, and then a 7^th place finish at the £5,000 EPT London Main Event in September.

By now, Marchese had garnered enough attention that it was becoming increasingly difficult to miss him in any field, as he was just making final tables at almost everything he played.  In October, Marchese decided to add a WPT Final Table to his resume finishing in 3^rd place at the 2010 World Poker Finals at Foxwoods.  It would take a bad beat to eliminate him from the event, but Marchese found himself under the spotlight and in front of the cameras yet again, as he booked yet another 6 figure score.  Marchese would then close out the year with a min-cash at the NAPT in Los Angeles main event, a 5^th place finish in the $5k bounty shootout, and a win at the $1k buy in 2010 Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic in Las Vegas at the Bellagio.  When the year was through, there was 2 victories, 11 final tables, and more than $2.1 million in earnings on the year.  The year ended with Marchese being named the CardPlayer.com Player of Year, and signifying that while you may have not heard of Tom Marchese prior to 2010, he will be the players that everyone will be on the lookout for in 2011.