A longtime online poker player, Jerry “sandler1860” Payne took 42nd in the 2010 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event for $206,000. The Centerville, Ohio native will log his first Las Vegas WSOP cash as a result after turning in four in the money finishes in Circuit Events.
Payne’s big break came in March 2010, when he final tabled the Hollywood Poker Open World Poker Tour (WPT) stop, cashing for $89,000 after a sixth place finish. Payne faced off against a tough final table in the $10,000 buy-in WPT event, the first ever at the Hollywood Casino in Indiana, including former WSOP Main Event champ Carlos Mortensen, Frank Calo, and Ravi “govshark2” Raghavan.
Prior to the WPT Hollywood Poker Open, Payne’s largest live cash came in a $550 No Limit Hold’em event during a WSOP Circuit stop at Caesars Indiana. There, he banked $21,000 and played second fiddle to Craig Brumfield; the low budget event attracted a field of 261 players.
In the online poker world, Payne won the Full Tilt Poker Sunday Mulligan in June 2009 for $52,000. In January 2010, he took second in the Wednesday Quarter Million on PokerStars for $33,000. Four months later, he recorded a win in the PokerStars $45,000 Guaranteed, a $109 buy-in online poker tournament, for $31,000. Another major score for Payne came in November 2009, when he won the PokerStars Nightly Hundred Grand, a right of passage for many online poker players, and walked away $19,000 richer for his wear.
Payne has accrued more than $1 million in tournaments that are tracked for the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings and is among the top players in the state of Ohio. In fact, he’s one of only two entrants from the midwestern state (Richard Morgan is the other) to make Day 7 of the 2010 WSOP Main Event.
Payne is primarily a tournament player, stating in his PocketFives.com profile, “f cash games.” He’s gained a considerable amount of poker know-how through the training site PokerXFactor and commercials for PartyPoker featuring Mike Sexton resulted in Payne diving into the poker pond in 2004.
