Texas Game
And a little more on young punk poker

LAS VEGAS–With the Scandis dropping like flies, a couple \”unknown\” Texans have stuck around to show their super-high-stakes hold\’em prowess.

Click here to follow the weekend action as we work our way down to the all-important final table.

Currently, Ray Henson from Houston (left) is the chip leader — with 10.965 million chips third in chips with more than 10 million. He\’s playing on the ESPN feature table, where previous main-event champ Scotty Nguyen seems to be the key camera draw.

This is different from the Bluff feature table, where John Armbrust from Austin (right) also has about 10 million in chips. Lee Watkinson, the new chip leader (14 million), is at his table, along with Accused Internet Robot \”RaiNKhan.\” Yesterday RaiNKhan, perhaps trying to show that he is indeed descended from monkeys, climbed up the ESPN scaffolding to celebrate a victorious hand. Yeow. Click here to see a video of some RaiNKhan celebrations in action.

Armbrust, by the way, is related by multiple marriages and maybe a little blood to the Fresh Princess. And Austin Pete Blackberry\’s in to inform us:

If Pokerati is looking to endorse anyone-John Ambrust is the proverbial \”friend of a friend.\”. Difference here, is that my friend has a 200 dollar one percent interest in Amburst. At a minimum that interest would worth 2.5k. Amburst was shortstacked sitting 49th out of the last 60 with 700k before going on a nice run. Her now sits 17th out of 37. I also checked the almanac, and if Amburst wins the main event, it would be the first time a main event champion and the Pokerati Invitational were won by players haling from the same city. Go Austin Poker!

CCExplore also has some great stuff about Armbrust here, and here.

UPDATE: And just like that, Armbrust is out. Damn, thought he was gonna win it.

From PokerNews:

Featured Table: John Armbrust Eliminated in 18th Place ($381,302)

Lee Childs has the button in seat 9, Ray Henson limps under the gun for 100,000, Childs limps from the button, John Armbrust raises from the big blind to 700,000, Henson folds, Childs thinks for a minute before he reraises to 1.7 million, and Armbrust quickly moves all in for 5.04 million.

Lee Childs goes into the tank for several minutes, counting out the amount of chips it would take to call the bet to see how it would affect his stack. He eventually calls, showing {A-Clubs}{Q-Spades}. John Armbrust shows {A-Spades}{K-Spades}, and he\’s a dominant favorite to double up here.

The flop comes {J-Clubs}{7-Clubs}{2-Clubs}, and the crowd reacts loudly as Childs flops a club flush draw to give him extra outs.

The turn card is — the {10-Clubs}! Lee Childs turns an ace-high flush to clinch the pot worth 10.32 million. (The meaningless river card is the {7-Diamonds}.)

John Armbrust is eliminated in 18th place, earning $381,302.

Nice job, friend of Austin Pete\’s friend and cousin of wife of cousin of somebody Adam Lewis-in-law! We\’ll have to tally it all up at the end, but it seems like Texans have a lot of main-event love/cash to bring home.