John Cynn Looking to Improve on 2016 Main Event Finish with 2018 Final Table
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While anyone watching the Main Event coverage this year has been focused on 2009 Main Event champion Joe Cada’s repeat deep run, there’s another player who has been here before, though he didn’t make it quite to the final table… yet.
John Cynn from Indianapolis made it all the way to Day 7 in 2016, but dwindled down and busted in 11th place on the unofficial final table bubble.
His 2016 Main Event run fell short when his stack dwindled to under ten big blinds and he got it in with queen-ten, but Gordon Vayo found ace-king in the big blind to look him up and send Cynn to the rail.
The bittersweet run in the Main that year earned Cynn $650,000, his previous best score being just under $20,000 for a 59th-place finish in the 2015 Millionaire Maker.
In the two years since his 2016 Main Event run, Cynn has added $200,000 in tournament winnings to his credit and is thrilled to be back under the lights of the Thunderdome.
“I’m feeling pretty great. This is definitely another surreal experience.”
His experience this time around is a bit different, having been here before.
“I’m definitely more comfortable than before, which is nice. It could be either because it’s my second time or because I have a bigger stack.
“Both experiences were incredible, but definitely having a lot of fun this time.”
Cynn’s Main Event trajectory has seen him chip up substantially on every day of the tournament besides a stagnant Day 2, as you can see below.
| Day | End-of-Day Chip Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 1c | 133,000 | 215/3,480 |
| 2c | 138,900 | 700/1,655 |
| 3 | 709,000 | 121/1,182 |
| 4 | 1,931,000 | 58/310 |
| 5 | 5,155,000 | 26/109 |
| 6 | 14,750,000 | 13/26 |
On Day 6 with blinds at 100K/200K/30K ante, Cynn was sitting with just over 4 million chips on the button and saw a very active Nirath Rean open to 450,000 under the gun before Daniel Tang flat-called. Cynn shipped with ace-jack and Rean tank re-shoved.
Once Tang folded, Cynn said, “This is really bad for me,” but was relieved to see he was flipping against pocket nines. The ace came right in the window, though the three-heart flop gave his opponent a flush draw, and Cynn told the table, “I’m very nervous right now.”
He followed up with, “I’ve never run this good in flips in tournament, anything. It’s insane how good I’m running. So I can’t complain no matter what happens.”
A clean runout followed and Cynn scored a big double up that got him going. He would end the day right in the middle of the pack with 14,750,000. By the second break on Day 7, Cynn had more than doubled what he started the day with, sitting at 32,200,000 and we asked how he got all those chips.
“By getting really lucky, I mean, this has been easily the best seven-day stretch of cards I’ve had in my whole entire life. And for that to come during the Main Event is like, unreal.”
If you ask anyone in poker, they’ll agree: that’s the dream.