Danny "THEDRY" Ryan Comes Painfully Close to FTOPS Title

poker player danny ryan - aka - THE__D__RY

Danny "THE__D__RY" Ryan had fought valiantly throughout FTOPS Event #12.

He had been one of the short stacks throughout most of the final table. When "DDBeast" was eliminated in third place, "ilikesaces86" had a massive chip lead on "THE__D__RY", and seemed to be headed for certain victory.

Those who are familiar with the play of Danny "THE__D__RY" Ryan knew that he would not go down without a fight. Ryan is an extremely strong poker player who does well in both MTT's and Sit and Go's. If you were going to make up a list of the top SNG players on Pokerstars, he would have to be near the top.

Anyways, I believe that "ilikesaces86" had an approximate 5-1 chip lead when they entered heads-up action of the $300+$22 rebuy, $1 million dollar guaranteed tournament.

"THE__D__RY" slowly chipped away at the lead and eventually managed to overtake "ilikeaces86".

A particularly big hand that saw Danny Ryan climb right back into contention came when the two players got all of their chips in the middle on a flop of J Q 5 with two clubs. Ryan held Q9 for top pair and "ilikesaces86" held a King-high flush draw. The turn gave Ryan two pair and the river brought no help for "ilikeaces86", and "THE__D__RY" was right back in the tournament.

They fought back and forth, with "ilikeaces86" taking quite a few pots by raising "THE__D__RY"'s continuation bets on the flop.

The final hand of the tournament came when "THE__D__RY" check-raised "ilikeaces86" pre-flop all-in holding pocket fives. "ilikesaces86" thought for a few seconds and called, holding pocket fours. If this hand had held, "THE__D__RY" would have almost certainly gone on to win the tournament, as "ilikesaces86" would have been very short-stacked.

However, Danny Ryan's worst fear came true when a four came on the flop, giving "ilikeaces86" the flopped full house. Ryan was down to two outs and the flop and turn brought no help. Ryan went out in second place for a very respectable $170k payday, while "ilikeaces86" ended up earning $257k.

This isn't the first time that Danny Ryan has come extremely close to taking down a major tournament on Full Tilt Poker. In July of 2007 he came in second in the $500k Guarantee for $75k, and in December he came in fourth place in the $750k Guarantee for $46k.

Give it some time though, and I am sure that the talented 24 year old will break through and win his first "major" event. After fighting so hard though in FTOPS #12, losing to a two-outer must have been particularly rough.

Filed Under: Online Poker Tournament Results

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