It wasn’t his biggest score by a long shot — Thomas Taylor regularly runs deep in high stakes mixed games in Vegas and around the world — but picking up a win in what amounts to his hometown casino in one of his favorite games was likely still a pretty decent way to spend a Monday.
Taylor came into the day as the clear favorite, given his experience in this format. He has deep runs in HORSE and 8-Game, as well as individual runs in most of the games in the HORSE rotation. Last year, he was 3rd in the $10k Stud8 Championship at the WSOP and he took 3rd in a Stud game in 2022 as well.
He wasn’t crushing the game from the start, however. He played a patient that saw him on one of the shorter stacks in the room for much of the early part of the game, but he really turned it on as they got closer to the money. Once he got heads up against Martin Butler he jumped into the lead quickly after they went two-handed nearly even.
Taylor took the early lead when he hit two pair and got value in a stud hand, but Butler wasn’t going down easily. He jumped into the lead a few hands later in hold’em when he made a solid call with second pair against the busted flush bluff from Taylor.
It pretty much ended in the following round of Omaha 8 or Better. Taylor found a scoop and left Butler on fumes when there was no low on board, and Taylor found a king-high straight for a huge pot. That left Butler on fumes, and it was only a matter of time before Taylor finished him off. Butler survived the razz round with a couple of runouts for small doubles, but he also had to bring in and fold several hands, remaining below 100k.
Taylor took it down in the following stud round in a hand that saw him hit the best pair after Butler was all in halfway down the streets. The win was modest compared to Taylor’s mixed game glory from Las Vegas, but doing it at home had to feel pretty good.
