The first PokerStars Championship Bahamas is underway and, as you expect, there are loads of stars in the main event already.
GPI Player of the Year David Peters is there. Daniel Negreanu, Olivier Busquet, Gaelle Baumann, high roller Ramin Hajiyev and Russian boss Andrey 'kroko-dill' Zaichenko all are, too.
And then there’s the guy who had all six right above at his table -- and accumulated the biggest stack of all.
84 year old Morris Doudan, a still-active insurance broker and financial advisor from Toronto, played in a charity tournament in his home casino early last December.
“I didn’t know what the 1st prize was until I won,” he says. “Then they told me it was a package for the Bahamas.”
“I was immediately approached by someone who wanted to buy the Bahamas package off me but I said I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Not afraid of a challenge.
40 Years of Experience
Dadoun had never played any live event of a significant size before today, although he can look back on 40 years of playing experience – mostly with his friends on the weekends.
Asked what he was looking for the most he said, “This is a dream come true. I would like to meet some champions and have the opportunity to play poker with them.”
That wish definitely came true today as he was indeed playing with all the players named above – and taking chips from them, too.
He doubled up early on, was the first player to eliminate another player in the main event and then went on to be the chip leader for a very long stretch of the day.
By end of day he'd been passed by chip leader James Martyn and a few others, including Dan Colman, but still held on strong in the top 10 with 112,800 in chips.
Check-Raising Peters, Bluffing kroko-dill
“I am at an age where I should have been retired," Dadoun told us today, "but I enjoy my age and I do everything I can.
Stacking chips is fun.
"I am not afraid of participating in something that seems to be so challenging.”
That we can confirm from first-hand experience. Whenever we walked by his table he was involved in some pot with poker pros of international acclaim.
We saw Morris check-raise Peters out of a pot on the flop. We saw him try to bluff both Peters and Zaichenko on the river with ten high and lose, only to come back even stronger.
And we saw him beat Daniel Negreanu and young gun Bradley Snider with a straight that brought him over the 100k-chip mark in Level 7.
Asked if he could take this down, he said “That would be amazing, but I’ll be just as happy with anybody else winning it."
Follow Dadoun's progress each day in the PokerStars blog and watch the Main Event live stream right here starting Tuesday, Jan. 10.
