photo: Jeanine Deeb *

Paul Kitsos, 55, was enthusiastically headed to Las Vegas from his home in Long Island, New York, with $11,000 in cash on him, when he died of an apparent heart attack mid-flight. According to his wife he was going to the WSOP, where his record indicates he had plenty reason to believe he stood a good chance of making a big splash.

For a little more about Kitsos’ life, here’s his obituary (with a few minor poker inaccuracies) in the New York Post.

And here’re his Hendon Mob results, which show about $389k in winnings from 19 tournament cashes in a 5-year poker career. Most recently he took 2nd in a $300 US Poker Championships event — the “Rounder Girl Bounty” tournament — and 2nd in a $1,375 event at the World Poker Finals at Borgata.

His biggest scores, $97k and $103k, came from two 5th place finishes — in the $5k WSOP-Caesars circuit main event in 2007, and the $5k Borgata Summer Poker Open main event in 2008. He has two cashes in the WSOP main event, finishing 468th in 2006 and 320th in 2008. Kitsos died with one 1st place victory under his belt, having bested a field of 231 to win the 2007 USPC Seniors event.

More…

With the start of the $1K Stimulus tournament came the arrival of a number of familiar faces from the East Coast. Having spent the last couple of years handling the media and tournament coverage for Borgata during their Poker Open tournaments, I’ve come to know a lot of the players out East and it’s always a pleasure to see them make the pilgrimage to the world’s poker Mecca for the WSOP.

With players whose styles are as diversified as the United Nations, the visiting East Coast talent pool features cash game kings, online aces, and tournament prodigies. Among those seeing action over the last two days were Matt Glantz (who finished 18th in the $40k — $96k payday), Dale Pinchot, Alex Neponyaschi, Farhad Sinaei and Tommy “TommyGunz” Dobrilovic.

According to Glantz, a number of AC’s “Big Game” players are also in town and they met up to play a session of $600/$1,200 Stud, Stud 8/B and $100/$200 No Limit at Bellagio recently. As we get deeper into the WSOP, we can expect to see a sizable contingency of East Coast players make their way West, and I’ll do my best to make sure these guys don’t get overlooked here at Pokerati.