Varnell Makes First Series Appearance
Level 5 . Ante 500 . Blinds 300.500 . Entries 209
Craig Varnell – winner of the FINAL poker tournament in the world before the pandemic kicked in – drops in this afternoon to be part of our $1.5 Million Guaranteed $1,000 Title Event.
Varnell says he enjoys being able to come to TCH Dallas, as he has friends in the area, making Texas poker tournaments easy for him to place onto his travel schedule.
Walk back in time with me, if you will, to when we started hearing stories about this mysterious flu-like virus going around. A large group of us are in San Jose, CA, putting on one of the world’s most popular tournaments, the Bay 101 Shooting Star, a former WPT tour stop.
People were already calling the room in early March, asking if the tournament would take place due to this Corona thing. Assured the tournament is running, players from across the globe traveled to northern California, 50 miles from San Francisco, to play in this prestigious event.
As the first day of play begins to end, television monitors throughout the room begin moving form sports programming to news flashes about worldwide concerns this virus is ever-expanding, becoming what some fear could be a pandemic.
Soon, the monitors showing NBA games flash up news Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert has tested positive for the virus. Then the Sacramento Kings and New Orleans Pelicans do not take the court in Sacramento and the NBA season is suspended.
All this happens with cards in the air for opening day of Shooting Star. Tournament Director Matt Savage and crew immediately begin putting plans in play to complete or suspend the poker tournament, and poker room management begin receiving word of countywide reductions in how many people can gather in any public area.
A decision is made to reduce Day 2 play from 90 to 60-minute levels, adding two more hours of play and eliminating the final day’s plans for extended play – reducing the event to just two more days.
By the time cards go in the air for Day 2, gatherings of no more than 250 are allowed in the county. That number is reduced to no more than 50 beginning the next day, and the tournament is set to keep playing that next day, March 13.
Day 2 plays all the way down to a 10-handed final table, with Varnell as chipleader, and the players are offered by Savage their ICM numbers, just in case the county decides all public activities have to stop and the poker room has to close.
The player do not vote to stop, choosing to return on the morning of the 13th to play down to a winner.
Well, you see, what happened was … on the morning of the 13th, one of the 10 remaining players arrived wearing a mask, isolating from the other nine, and coughing rather consistently.
With no one at that time knowing how the virus was transmitted, or how lethal is could be, the other nine immediately opt to take the ICM, bring the event to a close, and leave Santa Clara County – the first county in the world to go into full lockdown – and that lockdown took place just 18 hours after the official tournament end.
Varnell collected his $159,710, topping Kristen Foxen, Tyler Patterson, Ant Zinno, et al, and all left the area.
I flew out of San Jose at 3 pm on a Friday – a time time that is normally one of the world’s busiest airports. I walked through and onto a plane with just 7 other passengers as the world closed behind us a few hours later.