by Mad Harper

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I got quite excited when I saw the name Chris Martin on the PS qualifiers' list. "Ooh, Coldplay!" I thought. Obviously however, it's not Gwyneth Paltrow's pop-singing hubby on Table 56 - it's the other Chris Martin, the 23-year-old real estate agent from Bourbonnais, Illinois known on PokerStars as "LUHMAN".



Quietly-spoken Chris has been making calm and steady progress through the WSOP and - a couple of hours into Day 3 - had already bumped up his chips another $25k to $250,000. Several hours - and some enormous pots later and he's up to $453,000. His success here - everyone still playing is in the money - matches Chris' steady progress generally in online poker.

He said: "I've been playing for around three years now - and seriously for about a year. I pretty much play full-time (although I still put in a few hours at work) and it just gets better and beter. Last month was my best ever - I made the final tables of two events to win around $25,000 each time and won two seats at the WSOP. I'm pretty confident and comfortable with my game at the moment - and I couldn't be happier with the way I've been playing here."

Much as he likes playing cards however, poker is not Chris' first love: it's golf. Chris has been playing seven years or so and now has a 7 handicap. He said: "Yeah, golf is my favourite. If I win $12,000,000, the first thing I'm doing is ringing the Pebble Beach Pro Shop to set up a block of tee times for my friends and I. And the second thing I'm doing is buying a house in Scottsdale, Arizona. I have relatives there but the things I really like about it is that there's a lot of good golf courses round there."


Chris Martin is out - but in such a spectacular fashion, it had the ESPN crews jumping over furniture to shoot the scene.

Chris kicked off an all-in frenzy when he shoved his remaining 90k into the pot with pocket Jacks. A flop of 532 brought all-in calls from three other players and the cards were flipped over to reveal pocket Qs, As and tens.

A 10 on the turn gave this gargantuan pot - something well over 1.5 million - to the underdog. Bye bye Chris plus two other players, in the space of a couple of minutes.