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The 2016 November Nine: Seat 7, Gordon Vayo
- Updated: September 22, 2016
Each week leading into the World Series of Poker final table, we’ll profile one player who will be vying for the championship. Our profiles are sponsored by Advanced Poker Training, one of the world’s top poker training sites. At AdvancedPokerTraining.com, you can play up to 500 hands per hour of full-ring, six-max, Sit & Go or full MTTs against thousands of intelligent computerized opponents with instant advice, weekly training plans and much more. It’s the fastest way to ignite your game!
For Gordon Vayo, making the November Nine of the 2016 World Series of Poker Main Event is the culmination of his life’s work.
That’s true in both the sense of poker being the work he’s chosen for his life and this being the pinnacle of that work. And because it’s literally what Vayo has spent almost half of his life doing.
“I’ve been working my whole life for this,” he said after finishing the final day of play. “I feel like I’m in kind of a dream world; it hasn’t really sunk in yet.”
His whole life might not sound like a terribly long time, but the now-27-year-old first made his mark on the game playing underage online. So, although Vayo is the youngest of the November Nine, he is also one of the most experienced, having been around more than a decade.
The poker origins of the man who would become known online as “Holla@yoboy” began in modest home games with friends after the Moneymaker boom. Many of Vayo’s buddies were older and it was easier to get money online back in those days.
“I gave a dude at the home game $100 to send me on partypoker,” Vayo told PokerNews’ Remko Rinkema. “I would run it up and send him back the money, then lose it.”
Then, while staying with a friend’s family in Florida one summer, Vayo had a breakthrough. He and his buddy had a couple thousand dollars on iPoker and decided to try some heads-up games. Before they knew it, they had made over $10,000 in a week. Vayo decided it was time to get serious.
He found his first strategy forum on a site called WPTfan.com, where he began to sharpen his game with the help of others. He eventually discovered more mainstream sites, TwoPlusTwo and PocketFives, but the normal ebbs and flows of a poker bankroll eventually left him broke.
Without the means to use his poker skills to profit, Vayo found himself in a bit of a quandary. So he reached out to a legend of the online game, a man whom Vayo will be sitting with when the Main Event resumes, Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy.
At that time, Josephy was well-known for keeping a stable of players under his bankroll and Vayo decided his only recourse was to see if Josephy would be interested in backing him. The two came to an agreement and Vayo got back to his winning ways. Both men profited, though Vayo stressed that Josephy was none the wiser that he was backing a kid who had quit attending high school.
“He did not know I was underage,” Vayo said. “I had such respect for Cliff, so for him to have such confidence in me made me feel like I’m meant to be here.”
Vayo went on to rack up more than $1.4 million in cashes on PokerStars, according to PocketFives, ascending as high as the No. 15 overall ranking.
Nowadays, he’s …
