Nevada online player holds lead on final day of WSOP Main Event

By Case Keefer (contact)

Tuesday, July 14, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Ash Miles often wakes up to find his roommate, Thomas Kearney, already playing a minimum of four tables of online poker.

Miles, a fellow poker player who also works as a dealer, will go through his entire day and by the time he’s ready for bed, Kearney has usually tripled his action to at least 12 tables.

“He’s been doing it for years,” said Stephen Chimelski, who moved to Las Vegas with Kearney and previously lived with him for six years. “He plays so much more than everyone else. It’s laughable.”

Kearney, a 29-year-old local poker pro, is the top-rated player on WSOP.com, according to pokerdb.com, under the screen name “butters.” He says he averages paying $20,000 in rake per month, a figure Chimelski estimates is close to double the second-highest raked player.

Caesars Entertainment gifted Kearney a Seven Stars membership, the most elite level of its Total Rewards player’s club, and sent him on a cruise based solely on online play. But the true reward for his tireless dedication to the game is coming today at the Rio in the $10,000 buy-in World Series of Poker Main Event.

Kearney is the chip leader with 27 left out of the 6,420 players who started in poker’s world championship last week. He’s promised a payout of $262,574 entering the summer’s final day of play with a chance to realize every poker player’s dream and advance to the “November Nine” final table, which comes with a guaranteed $1 million windfall.

Play begins at noon today at the Rio and will continue until the final table is set, no matter how long it takes. The nine finalists will return on Nov. 8 to play three straight nights for the $7,680,021 first-place prize and championship gold bracelet.

Everyone remaining in the field has played 60 hours over the course of six days, which most players agree is mentally grueling. But Kearney is actually spending less time playing compared to his normal schedule.

“I’ve been playing 15-16 hours a day pretty much every day,” he said. “No one grinds as hard as I do.”

Kearney, who’s originally from Raymond, New Hampshire, started playing poker seriously while in college at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island. He had so much success online that he dropped out of school to focus on working his way up to games with nosebleed stakes like blinds of $500-$1,000.

Chimelski met Kearney while in school at Bryant and convinced him to move to Las Vegas after graduating in 2009.

“I was so bored in the middle of nowhere New Hampshire, where there’s nothing to do at 10 p.m.,” Kearney said. “So I moved out here where it’s cheap to live, there’s fun stuff to do and everyone kind of gets the poker thing. Back home, you tell someone you play poker and they think it sounds dumb.”

Kearney may have felt the same way about playing in tournaments for a living a few years ago. He was almost exclusively a cash-game player, finding the variance too much in tournaments.

Kearney only expanded his game selection to include major live tournaments after nearly a decade of playing poker. Last year was the first time he entered the Main Event.

“I got into tournaments a lot more when I realized the value in them,” Kearney said. “The swings are nuts, but if you run good at the right time, win one flip, you could end up winning (the whole tournament).”

He hadn’t seen those types of flips fall for him through two years around the local tournament circuit. Kearney made two deep runs in World Series of Poker events over the last two years — both in pot-limit Omaha, his variant of choice — only to get eliminated by river cards when all-in as a favorite.

He had to settle for a 16th-place finish in last year’s $10,000 buy-in PLO championship and ninth in this year’s $1,000 buy-in event, totaling $51,647 in winnings.

“He’s a guy who’s always under the radar because of his luck these last few years,” said Will Givens, a close friend and WSOP bracelet winner. “A lot of people throw in the towel and say, ‘I’m done with poker. It’s not for me. I’m unlucky.’ But Tom knows his skills are above the rest.”

Givens celebrated the loudest when Kearney scooped one of the most significant pots of the tournament to rocket into first place late Monday night. Kearney looked down at pocket Aces and shoved all in after a player had already made a raise.

Another short stack behind him went all in, and the original raiser called. Kearney's advantage held against the other players' pocket Queens and Ace-King suited.

“It was just good timing,” Kearney said. “And I was on the right end.”

He didn’t find himself in many situations that fortunate through the first few days of the tournament, where he slogged through the field despite a merely average run of cards. Lesser players probably would have gotten impatient and never survived long enough to enjoy the rush that’s hit Kearney over the last two days.

The thousands of hours spent online have apparently paid off.

“He plays until like 5 in the morning every day,” Miles said. “So we know he’s ready for this.”

Case Keefer can be reached at 948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.