Vinnie Vinh Updates

[Canuckickstan 2]

Back from the dead.

[Billy 0]

so he's alive???

[BigDMcGee 3,352]

Who the FCK keeps bankrolling vinnie vinh LOL "Vinnie Vinh Blinded Off in 22nd Place ($12,468)Vinnie Vinh failed to show up for Day 2 of Event #30 $2,500 Short-handed. This is the second time this has happened at the 2007 WSOP. Vinh had been missing for over a week before he showed up at the Rio to play over the weekend. Althigh his behavior was erratic late on Day 1 of this event, he made the money and advanced to Day 2.Without a doubt, this is probably the saddest story in poker at the WSOP this year. There has been speculation of rampant drug abuse and judging by his emaciated appearence and behavior, the facts point to a serious problem."he no showed/blinded his way into ANOTHER 20ish place spot.. I mean seriously... What the fuk.. I guess his backers must believe he has a great deal of talent to put up with these no shows , but I mean.. come on.. he's not stu unger or something..

[TR1N1TY 0]

Wednesday, June 20, 2007 WSOP Day 19: The Ghost of Stuey Ungar and Katja Thater Wins Razz BraceletBy Paulyhttp://taopoker.blogspot.com/Just before sunrise, you can find the ghost of Stuey Ungar wandering the hallways of the convention center at the Rio. Somedays he's cleaning out the trash. Other days he's bartending in front of the poker kitchen. Sometimes he's dealing a satellite or standing guard near the cage. Most of the time, he's standing on the rail checking out the action in the biggest cash game in the room.Stuey Ungar is the greatest NL Hold'em player of all time. And that's not a half-baked comment coming from a hack of a poker writer. The men that knew him and played with him are the ones responsible for bestowing that accolade. If you don't believe me go ask Doyle Brunson or Mike Sexton. They'll sit you down and tell you some stories about Stuey that will blow your mind.These days, the legend of Stuey Ungar grows, thanks to plenty of colorful stories about the kid from New York City with a voracious appetite for action who took Las Vegas by storm. The gin rummy prodigy could not get a decent gin game and turned to poker instead. You've heard the ensuing stories. You've seen the awful movie about his life. You've read the amazing book by Peter Alson and Nolan Dalla. There are plenty of heroic gambling tales to go around and even several sad and pathetic ones. Those somber stories are told with a semblance of disappointment as the storyteller usually paints a desperate picture of Stuey in the years leading up to his death.Did Stuey Ungar's self-destructive behavior kill him or was Las Vegas an accomplice?Another player turned Stuey onto cocaine in the early 1980s. Players and gamblers used to do it because it allowed you to stay up all night to gamble. (That was before Red Bull aka cocaine in a can was introduced.) But a drug like cocaine in the hands of a monster like Stuey was what helped steer him to his downfall. It was bad enough that he limped through life with a serious gambling problem (sports betting, horses, prop bets, you name it) but when you add the affects of rampant drug abuse, you basically have a recipe for disaster. Instead of snorting a few lines in a bathroom stall late at night to stay awake, he was doing it more frequently. Before he knew it, he was a raging cokehead in a 24 hour city that profits on your every weakness. It's no wonder that several of his friends bet on whether or not he would survive his 40th birthday.At the 1990 WSOP, Stuey amassed a monster chiplead and went back to his hotel room to party. His backer Billy Baxter frantically showed up the next day when Ungar was a no show at Binion's Horseshoe. Ungar suffered an overdose and could not make it to the rest of the tournament. He had a big enough lead that his idle stack advanced to the final table before he was blinded off in 9th place.Sound familiar?Flash forward 17 years later to the Amazon Ballroom in the Rio. For second time inside of two weeks, Vinnie Vinh's stack sat at his table without him behind it. He failed to show up for another Day 2. When he disappeared last week, rumors swirled around the poker community of his whereabouts and many of us pontificated about his current state. My gut told me he was strung out somewhere, probably close by, but millions of miles away from home. I had seen it happen dozens of times before in my own journey through life. Some folks slip and when they slip, they dive head first into the deep end of insanity. Usually they are hopeless souls and no one can save them except themselves. The lucky ones stumble out of their alcho-narco stupor barely alive. And the weak ones? You show up at their funeral a few weeks later with a knot in your stomach the size of a basketball as you look this person's mother or wife or daughter in the eye and say, "I'm sorry for your loss."I covered Day 2 of Event #30 $2,500 NL Shorthanded. Everyone showed up at 2pm for the restart except Vinnie Vinh. The field had plenty of big names left like Erik Seidel, Erick Lindgren, Mimi Tran, Hoyt Corkins, and of course Vinnie Vinh who was noticeably absent. The floor supervisor walked over to his table and opened up his sealed bag of chips. He quickly stacked them up before he left the table. Ten minutes later, I wandered over to see if Vinh had arrived. His chair was empty and as my eyes focused on a figure standing at the rail. I saw the ghost of Stuey Ungar.The dealers began the process of blinding Vinnie Vinh's stack off. Since the tournament was short-handed NL Hold'em, his stack decreased at a faster rate."He's the tightest player left in the tournament," Mimi Tran joked as she sat at his table. "He hasn't played one hand yet."He still outlasted twenty players and finished in 22nd place out of the 42 players who survived Day 1 and advanced to Day 2. He won $12,468 and did not play a single hand on Day 2.Every ninety seconds or so, another person would come up to the media desk and ask, "Where's Vinnie Vinh?"Players, media reps, and spectators bombarded me with the same question and that put me on tilt."How the **** should I know?" I snapped a dozen times.The constant interruptions were slowing down my work and then I'd get distracted again when someone asked the same question. The anger was slightly misdirected. The media reps were trying to get to the bottom of the story and besides Hellmuth trying to win bracelet #12, the Vinnie Vinh saga had become one of the biggest stories of the 2007 WSOP right up there with Eskimo Clark's waning health (which I'll discuss shortly).I was pissed off because my biggest fear about Vinh became a harsh reality. Vinh was not pulling off a Hellmuthian psyche-out and arriving a few minutes late. He wasn't going to be coming in at all. I accepted that fact ten minutes into the tournament. He was a goner. But everyone else was brainwashed and honestly thought that good would triumph over evil and there would be a warm and tender Hollyweird moment where Vinh would swear off loose women and drugs for the rest of life and race into the room with his NA sponsor and his family cheering him on from the rail as he won a bracelet. That only happens on Lifetime's Movies of the Week.Under the gritty lights of Las Vegas, evil always squashes good. Vinh was long gone, somewhere deep into the thirteenth hour of a serious bender. Crystal meth? Crack? Cheese? Cocaine? Pills? Booze? All of the above?The last place Vinh was going to be found was at Table #72 in the Amazon Ballroom. You had better luck finding him passed out in the bathroom of the Oasis Motel. That's were Stuey Ungar's dead body was found in November of 1998 with $800 in his pockets. They say he died of a heart attack, but Stuey's friends would tell you that he died years before.David "The Dragon" Pham walked up to me around 6pm. He normally wears sunglasses and slid them down as he looked me in the eye and said, "Vinnie didn't show up today?"The gloomy look in The Dragon's eye told me that he already knew the answer yet he asked anyway."Nope. He got blinded off in 22nd place.""What the ****?" he said before he muttered something in Vietnamese and walked away.

[FileError404 0]

Great find Tr1n!But this Gem takes the cake: :lol:From Wickedpokerchops:Vinnie Vinh's Chair Finishes 22nd in the $2,500 Short-Handed Event at the 2007 WSOPDue to prior commitments that likely involved foaming at the mouth and delusions of insects crawling on his skin, Vinnie Vinh was unable to make Day 2 of Event 30 yesterday at the 2007 WSOP.But his chair was there in his place, starting the day with 73,800 in chips with 42 players remaining. Saddled with a tight table image and unable to really get anything going throughout the day, Vinh's chair still managed to outlast 20 other players to finish 22nd, good enough for a cash of $12,468.This is Vinh's chair's second cash in the 2007 WSOP (it finished 20th in Event 8), establishing a new WSOP record for a chair in a non-chair-only event.

[gmanshade 0]

wow...so i guess i was wrong about r.i.p. vinny vinhhe took 22nd for $12k+ in the 6-handed NL holdem on 6/19unless it was a weekend at bernie's kind of thing (or a jesus christ kind of thing) he didn't dieEDIT:I just looked at the 2+2 threadomgI didn't realize the same thing happened with this second cash: he didn't show up for day 2 and was blinded offthat is sick. at this point his status has to be changed from "guy with drug problem" to "soon-to-be-dead guy who has drug problem"i am reinstating the r.i.p. vinny vinh alert

[gmanshade 0]

p.s.how fing sick is it that my boy phil hellmuth made another WSOP FThe already has one bracelet and if he wasn't card dead at the FT he would have taken down anotheralso he was drinking pro player at the FTmy gf still gets mad at me when I bring up that drink with her, but its so funny to see her mad i can't help myself sometimes

[ajs510 122]

How the hell is it that the entire poker community is buzzing about this guy and how bad he looks, yet there isn't a single simple picture of him *ANYWHERE*?The next post about Vinny "Neardeath" Fucking Vihn better have a picture of the corpse.

[gmanshade 0]

gmanshade is my favorite poster on FCP

[Canuckickstan 2]

Wheere in the world is Vinnie Vinh ?2007 WSOP - Exit Vinnie Vinh Vinnie showed up for this year's WSOP $2,500 no-limit hold'em event #8, on June 5, in rare form. The usually petulant vagabond out of Houston ended Day 1 with 81 players remaining and a whopping $200,000 in chips. He went into Day 2 second in chips - and that's where it ended. The next day he commissioned his chair to do the rest, finishing in 20th place with $16,232. Kudos to the chair, for the final two tables celebrated the most peaceful Vinnie Vinh exit in history, as players, fans and tournament staff bid his last chip (and the chair) adieu. Many people expressed their concern at his sudden disappearance, as friends called his cell phone to hear a generic recorded message announcing that his voicemail box was full. Those who knew of his whereabouts paid him a visit. But others, aware of his little secret, suspected he'd fallen off another wagon. For Vinnie, a discrete disappearing act wouldn't do. Always yearning to be the center of attention, he might as well have driven his own float off the road of poker's equivalent to the Macy's Day Parade.