Gordon Vayo is 27-years-old. He pronounces his last name “Vey-oh” and is an established poker pro who was born in Bloomington, Illinois but now calls San Francisco, California home. Vayo never went to college, having picked up poker as a hobby that was earning him a living before even graduating highschool. Now Vayo is sure to win no less than $1 million dollars as some of the final nine players within the 2016 World Series of Poker $10,000 no-limit hold’em main event.

Coming into the overall table in third chip position with 49,375,000 he has a really perfect shot at becoming the following world champion, capturing the championship bracelet and the first-place prize of $8,000,000.

Vayo spends much of his time as a poker pro playing pot-limit Omaha cash games, but has still found time to cash for $974,359 in live poker tournaments, with 80 career cashes and two titles to his name.

Vayo’s biggest score, previous to his deep run primarily event this year, came when he finished runner-up in a 2014 WSOP $3,000 no-limit hold’em six-max event for $314,535. he also played extensively online under the screen name “holla@yoboy.”

Like anybody who makes the primary event final table Vayo ran pretty much in a couple of big pots. Most notably within the following hand. Michael Niwinski raised to 350,000 and Jonas Lauck three-bet to 875,000 from the button. Vayo went all in for 4,755,000 from the massive blind with the AK and it folded to Lauck, who instantly called with the AA.

The board ran out Q103J9 to provide Vayo the broadway straight and the pot, increasing his stack to over 10 million. Lauck was left with only six big blinds and was eliminated shortly after in 37th place ($174,826).

That key hand kept Vayo alive late on day 6 of the world’s greatest poker tournament, and from there he never looked back. Card Player TV caught up with Vayo just minutes after he made the general table to speak to him about his background in poker and his thoughts about his probabilities of popping out on top this autumn. He also spoke in regards to the other players on the final table, several of whom are his friends.

“Cliff [Josephy], “Bax”, was my first ever backer for online poker, so we go way back," admitted Vayo. “Jerry [Wong] and that i return a protracted way, Griffin [Benger] and i've been playing online a very long time together. Everyone else seems very nice. It’s an ideal final table, but it’s also a very good group of people.”

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Read More... [Source: CardPlayer Poker News]