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The first thing I noticed about Party Poker qualifier Ary Avnet was the HUGE chip stack in front of him. With two players engaged in a blind-vs.-blind confrontation over a substatial pot, Ary took the opportunity to stand up, stretch his legs, and fill me in on his road to the WSOP.

Ary earned his way into the Main Event via a freeroll tournament. “I had to beat out 7,000 players just to get here, now I just have to beat 8,000 more” he said with a smile. The law student from Lansing, MI made a huge comeback yesterday after being knocked down to only 2000 in chips.

“I pushed it all in with A4 and cracked pocket kings,” he said. “And just now, I doubled up within the last two hands. I took a 40K pot with QQ.”

Playing as “raist39” on Party Sihoki , Ary is sitting comfortably on a stack approaching 100,000.

Exit Stories: Sean Wilde

Short stacked most of the day and sitting at the table with poker pro Tom McEvoy, Sean Wilde said his first WSOP was a tough one.

“I was at a tight table,” he said, “and I couldn’t get anything going.”

His WSOP appearance was short lived when he was beat by a pair of aces.

“I needed more chips,” he said. “I tried to make a move on someone and it didn’t work.”

From Bristol, Penn., Sean paid $6 for his seat at the WSOP when he won a satellite tournament leading him to an online qualifying tournament. Placing in a $215 qualifier, Sean and his girlfriend, Tiffany Brett headed out for their first time in Las Vegas.

“It was one of the best experiences in my life,” he said. “Playing this tournament is an overwhelming experience and there is no way to prepare for the actual circus that it is…it’s easy to forget what got you there.”

Sean said he plans to play on PartyPoker and other online sites to get back to the WSOP in 2007 for another run.

Charlie Ng

Charlie Ng is my choice for “Up and Coming Young Player to Watch”. He was the run-away Best All Around player at the WPT events in Reno back in March. You might know him better as the most frequent dealer on Celebrity Poker Showdown, which films at the Palms here in Las Vegas. Charlie is a regular dealer at the Palms.

Today Charlie began Day Two with 8,675 and is so often the case with a Day Two short stacks, it was a late hand on Monday night that crippled Charlie. We spoke just before the cards were in the air and he told me that to a rag, rag, rag board the other player made what had to be a continuation bet with AK, so Charlie moved him all-in with his pocket pair and still the player called off his last 6K and sure enough tosses over AKo. You know the rest, King on the turn and Charley is down to under 9K to start Day Two. A perfect read and a terrible ending.

Charlie was patient today. He played only one hand but slowly got blinded down on a very aggressive pre-flop table. As he passed under 5K, he got up from the table and told me:

“I will move with AT or any pair but I’m not giving in here. There is still time to make a move and get some chips back.”