Gordon Vayo
Twitter: @GordonVayo
Age: 27
Hometown: San Francisco, California
Occupation: Professional Poker Player
Marital Status: Engaged
WSOP Earnings: $608,136
WSOP Cashes: 26
WSOP Final Tables: 2
Best Previous Main Event Finish: N/A
*All stats are prior to the 2016 Main Event
Gordon Vayo is a 27-year-old professional poker player from San Francisco, California. He enters the final table third in chips and will have a WSOP experience edge over most of his remaining competitors. Vayo has played the WSOP Main Event every year since turning 21 and he has the most WSOP cashes of all of this year’s November Niners. He has 26 cashes totaling $608,136 in tournament earnings. Vayo cashed in seven of the 20 events that he played in this year prior to the Main Event. The Main Event is the eighth cash for Vayo and his first final table of the year. It is his third career WSOP final table. He made his first career WSOP final table in 2012 when he finished fourth in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Six Max event. He earned $121,262, which was his largest live cash at the time. His second WSOP final table came in 2014 when he finished runner-up in a $3,000 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Max. He scored $314,535 for that cash and it became his largest live cash up until this year’s Main Event.
Vayo has continued his tournament hot streak away from the WSOP during the break. In early September, Vayo ended up chopping the $2,500 River Series Main Event at the WinStar Wolrd Casino for just under $600k.
"[It was] my second biggest cash ever so that was pretty incredible, said Vayo."
When not playing other events, Vayo is preparing for the Main Event final table with the coach he hired.
"We'll be doing a lot of work before we restart, but I'll continue to play my game overall. More of a sharpening than a shift," said Vayo.
Road to the Final Table:
Vayo came out of the gates strong. He finished Flight C of Day 1 with a stack of nearly double the tournament average. Things then slowed down for Vayo and he bagged fewer chips at the end of Day 2 than he began the day with. He bagged less than the tournament average for days 2-6 of the tournament. Vayo was on the brink of elimination near the end of Day 6 when he got all of his chips in the middle preflop holding Ace-King against Jonas Lauck’s pocket Aces. Vayo turned a straight, awarding him the pot and keeping his Main Event tournament life alive. He ended up finishing Day 6 in 17th place out of the 27 remaining players.
Vayo got off to a slow start on Day 7. He began the day with 8,795,000 chips (44 bbs) and by the midway point he was down to just 4,550,000 and 15 big blinds. The second half of Day 7 is when Vayo shined. Vayo started his move to the top of the leaderboard when he doubled up through Jerry Wong by winning an all-in preflop flip. Then two hands later Vayo eliminated Andrew Christoforou in 18th place. Vayo then eliminated Michael Niwinski in 15th place to move to second in chips. Vayo got a sniff of the chip lead by taking a pot of Cliff Josephy, but Josephy was able to retake it fairly quickly. Vayo moved to third in chips after Qui Nguyen eliminated three straight players. Vayo’s position in the chip counts did not move after that and he will head to the final table in third place.
Final Table Position:
Vayo has 49,375,000 chips (98 bbs). He has the 4th and 5th place chips stacks surrounding him. He has Michael Ruane to his right with 31,600,000 chips (63.2 bbs) and Kenny Hallaert to his left with 43,325,000 chips (86 bbs).
More November Niner Profiles: