PokerStars Passport Winner Dustin Mele is Ready for the Trips (and cash)

Filed in archive Internet Poker on January 22, 2008

I had mentioned the PokerStars Passport freeroll a month ago that awarded a top 100 tournament leadboard player at their site the chance to compete in ten big buy in tournament around the world on their dime. Dustin Mele will globetrotting across these $10,000 buy in tournaments without worrying about taking out a second mortgage or if he doesn't win any money that finding a hot dog at the snack bar will prove too costly.

Mele recently hit up the people at the PokerStarsBlog.com to leave a note of his previous experiences in big time tourney including this unfortunate fiasco at the 2006 World Series of Poker that crippled him:

We were not far from the money at all. There were about 1,000 players left, so I was being as safe as possible. I was limiting my play to only great hands and was not stealing blinds or making moves until we reached the money. The dealers changed, and before I knew it I picked up kings once and queens twice, It seemed that there was an ace or sometimes two on every flop, and players were betting, raising and flipping over pockets aces. It seemed like aces were everywhere. Finally, I had the aces, a player raised under the gun, and I pushed all-in.
The player that raised was the only caller and the dealer said, "Turn your hands up." I turned over the ace of clubs and ace of spades. The other player turned over ace of spades and queen of hearts. What in the world?
We both had the ace of spades in our hands.

We were at the end of the blind period and we had been using this deck for a long time. I had lost one pot to Chris Ferguson worth more than 100,000 using this deck and guess what? He had aces full to my jacks full using a flawed deck. Now, the five aces in the deck were discovered when I finally picked up pokcet aces and I was forced to split the pot with the other player in the hand. I was screwed out of all the chips I had lost using this bogus deck.

And since Dustin will be using exact zero dollars/euros to enter these tourneys, its all pure profit for the 23 year old.

Read the whole story here at PokerStarsBlog.com and envy the poker freeroll of a lifetime.