Friday, 29th March 2024 09:48
Home / From potentially bubbling to twice doubling, Tom Parsons is prospering in PSPC

Platinum Pass winner Tom Parsons has the fifth-largest stack with 52 remaining in the PokerStars Players Championship (PSPC). But when he was all in on the bubble, it could have been very different…


You’re freerolling in a $25K buy-in poker tournament and you’re two eliminations away from an enormous min-cash.

You have seven big blinds. 

Then you pick up pocket aces.

ACES ON THE BUBBLE

“It was quite strange,” says Platinum Pass winner Tom Parsons, who found himself in this exact spot yesterday, with 77 players remaining and 75 paid in the PokerStars Players Championship (PSPC).

“We’d had a lot of chat and rapport at my table,” he continues. “Right before the cards were dealt I told the table, you know I’m going to be shoving a really tight range here.”

Immediately after those words left his mouth, he picked up pocket aces. He moved all in for his seven big blinds. 

“It’s like it was speech play,” he says. “All of the table was like, you can’t say that then shove!

“It folds around and when I was called [by pocket jacks], it was just one of those things. I know I’m covered, but if I go out now, it’s just a sick cooler. These things happen. But I wasn’t going to pass up on a spot that’s so great. Seven big blinds and aces just felt like a dream.”

A big crowd gathered for Parsons’ all in

The aces held, and he could breathe a sigh of relief. We put it to him that while getting dealt aces is the dream, there were almost certainly some Platinum Pass winners who would have laid the hand down, declining to play a hand until they were in the money.

“I think that’s true,” says Parsons. “I think it helps with my situation. I’m young, I don’t have a mortgage or a family. Of course, the money in itself is life-changing. Even the min-cash is crazy. But knowing I’d be able to go on and potentially build for a deep run, where there really is life-changing money for absolutely anyone who wins it, this was on my mind.”

“Seven big blinds and aces felt like a dream.”

He admits he did make some marginal folds throughout the drawn-out bubble period. “I let go of ace-queen off for 11 big blinds after an open and a call from a short stack,” he says. “But this time, I had to go. I had aces!”

JACKS HAVE BEEN GOOD TO HIM

When the chips slid his way, Parsons rail–which last night featured his girlfriend plus fellow Platinum Pass winners RichyRob, GJ Reggie, Mason Pye, and Keith Becker–went nuts.

“It’s really nice because you can look over and there’s always someone sweating you,” Parsons says of his PSPC support system. “It would be a dream to make the final table and be the one with the loud rail. exciting, but I can’t get ahead of myself. Making it through today is the goal.”

Parsons gave them another reason to celebrate when he doubled up with pocket jacks through thea ace-jack off of Laszlo “Omaha4Rollz” Bujtas. 

“Me and Laszlo had a bit of history, we played three pots and he rivered me twice, so this was the third one and thankfully I was able to hold,” he says. “Jacks have been good for me today!”

“Good” might be an understatement, as you’ll see below.

HIS PLATINUM JOURNEY

At Lex Live London in 2019, Tom Parsons, along with many members of Lex Veldhuis’ Twitch community, took part in a scavenger hunt. Each participant received a card, on which various tasks had to be completed and stamped before 10:30 am that morning. 

Parsons, 25, who goes by “Predator410” on Twitch, was among those who handed in a fully-ticked card. Six entries were then drawn, including Parsons, and they flipped to see who would go through to a single-table sit & go. It was Parsons.

“We all thought the prize would be a t-shirt or something,” he told us at the time. Actually, the prize was a Platinum Pass. “When Lex told us, I just started shaking,” he adds.

He won it, the rest is history. 

Lex Veldhuis congratulates Parsons after he won his Platinum Pass at Lex Live

Winning the Platinum Pass had a big influence on Parsons life over the following years. When the PSPC was planned for 2020, he thought he’d only have a few months of playing before the event. Then it was postponed for a year.

“I thought, there’s no harm in trying to play professionally for a year,” he says. “But by the end of that year, it was postponed again. By then I had more financial stability though poker and it allowed me to continue to develop.”

Parsons is now in the money with 51 players between him and $4 million.

“It’s an absurd amount of money,” he says. “That’s life set up for you. It’s the kind of thing people dream of. 

“Me too.”

MORE ABOUT THE PSPC

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