Until two weeks ago, perhaps the biggest thrill of Jeff Madsen’s life occurred during his senior year at Palisades High, when he and his Dolphin teammates won the City Invitational baseball championship at Dodger Stadium. On July 16, Madsen shocked a packed crowd at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas by finishing first in a field of 1,579 players to become the youngest player (at 21 years and five weeks) ever to win a World Series of Poker event. According to the Associated Press, Madsen pocketed $660,948 in a three-day no-limit hold’em game. And just to prove it was no fluke, he won a second no-limit hold’em game last Saturday, upping his net earnings to almost $1.4 million. What will he do with his newly-earned money? ‘I’m just going to do a lot of random shopping,’ he was quoted as saying in Saturday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times. ‘I really haven’t figured it out yet.’ Madsen, who graduated from PaliHi in 2003, began developing his craft during his freshman year at UC Santa Barbara, playing primarily at the Chumash Indian casino in Santa Ynez, where 18 is the legal gambling age. To earn the victory Saturday, Madsen had to go heads-up at the final table against previous World Cup player-of-the-year Erick Lindgren. The result was the poker equivalent to an unkown qualifier beating Tiger Woods at The Masters. In the final hand, Lindgren raised to $50,000 before the flop (the first three community cards) and Madsen called. The flop came K-Q-2 rainbow (three different suits) and Madsen immediately moved all of his chips into the pot. Lindgren thought for a few moments, then called all-in and showed A-J of diamonds. Madsen showed Q-9, giving him a pair of queens and the lead at that point in the hand. The turn, or fourth, community card was the 5 of diamonds, which gave Lindgren a chance to win the pot with an ace on the final card, any 10 for a straight, or any diamond for a flush. There were 15 cards left in the deck that would snatch victory away from Madsen. But the river card was the three of hearts and Madsen had his second gold bracelet in less than a week. While his winnings have increased Madsen’s bank account they apparently have not warped his values. The morning after hitting his latest jackpot, he was back at home by Riviera Country Club to attend a memorial service for his grandmother. ‘Jeffrey is so cool as a cucumber,’ his mom, Harriett, told AP. ‘You would not know, sitting next to him at the memorial service, that this boy just became a millionaire.’ Madsen, on summer break from UCSB where he is studying film, showed signs of great things to come on July 5 when he finished third out of 670 players in the Rio’s $2,000 buy-in Omaha high-low tournament, good for $97,552. ‘He was a great kid and he had a pretty good bat,’ said Russ Howard, Palisades’ varsity baseball coach from 1986-93. ‘I remember that he was very low key’he always kept his cool.’ Jeff’s older sister Marissa ran cross country and track at PaliHi, where she won the Palisadian-Post Cup Award as the school’s outstanding senior athlete in 2001. Ferguson Also Wins at World Series of Poker Fellow PaliHi grad Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, the Palisades’ most famous poker player and main-event champion at the 2000 World Series of Poker, has cashed in at three tournaments so far during this year’s 37th running of the WSOP. Known most for his trademark black clothes, sunglasses and black hat, Ferguson had tallied $18,530 through July 18. His best finish was 17th on July 7 in an Omaha high-low tournament, worth $9,964. His other cashes include 59th place on July 18 in a no-limit hold’em shootout (for $4,805), and 61st place on June 30 in a pot-limit hold’em for $3,761. Ferguson is one of the top pros considered to have a chance to win the main event, which starts Friday and ends on Aug. 10. World Series officials are expecting about 8,000 players to compete in this single event, about 2,500 more than last year’s record-shattering total. First place money this year is projected to be $10 million. (Russ Scott, managing editor of The Dispatch in Moline, Illinois, contributed to this story.) By RUSS SCOTT Special to the Palisadian-Post ”’ Jeff Madsen’s historic run at the 37th annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas continued early Thursday morning when he finished third in a tournament, pushing him into second place on the WSOP points leaderboard and second in the overall tournament player of the year rankings. ”’ Madsen, a graduate of Palisades Charter High School, battled his way to third place in the $1,000 buy-in’ seven-car stud high-low event before getting knocked out about 1:30 a.m. at the Rio Hotel and Casino. ”’ It was the fourth time this month that Madsen, of Brentwood, made a World Series final table. He won two of those events, becoming the youngest player ever–at just five weeks past his 21st birthday–to win a coveted gold bracelet. And, of course, the youngest to ever win two bracelets. ”’ The overnight finish netted Madsen $65,971, pushing his total winnings for the Series to $1,467,852, good for second in the player-of-the-year standings behind well-known poker pro Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, who has amassed $2,093,730. ”’ Madsen’s final hand pitted him against eventual tournament winner Patrick Poules. “Boy Wonder”, as Madsen is being called by some at the World Series, was knocked out when his lone pair was topped by his opponent’s pair of aces. ”’ A total of 788 players started the tournament on Monday. Madsen was in last chip position when the final table began with eight players, but he fought his way toward the top until running into Poules’ top pair.
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