WSOP 2013 Main Event November Niner Mark Newhouse
After 7 days of intense action that saw more than 6,300 players eliminated from the most prestigious of all poker tournaments in the history of the game, Mark Newhouse emerged with eight other prolific players to make up the elite November Nine. He currently sits with the second smallest stack, just 7,350,000 chips before him, about 1 million more than the short stack, David Benefield, but a full 30 million behind the chip leader, JC Tran. Although his odds are slim, past experience has taught us that anything can happen in the WSOP Main Event.
If the name Mark Newhouse sounds familiar, it should be. Although he hasn’t made too many headlines of late, Newhouse was a powerhouse when he first hit the poker scene at the age of 21. A prodigious young gun of poker, Mark’s first ever live tournament win came in the 2006 WSOP when he finished 5th in Event #23, Limit Holdem, for $56,470. In September of that same year, his name went mainstream when he took down the Borgata Poker Open PPT/WPT NL Holdem Championship for $1,519,020. His second live tournament win, and he was already a millionaire and WPT Title holder at just 21 years of age.
Like so many youths who come into sudden money, Newhouse squandered his earnings. Mark moved to LA and took up residence in a hotel room at the Commerce Casino, himself admitting to “losing his mind” and virtually setting his winnings “on fire” with one bad money management decision after another. Over the next few years, he became dually nomadic, moving back and forth between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. While his bank account didn’t look nearly as bountiful as it had in the Fall of 2006, between live and online play, he was still bringing in enough tournament winnings to keep himself buoyant.
As for the young pro’s live tournament results, Newhouse earned $105,525 at the Five Star World Poker Classic WPT NL Holdem Championship of 2008 when he finished in 19th place, following that up with two more cashes that year for another $32k combined. 2009 was a less than positive year for the American poker pro from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, raking in just one menial cash of $4,113 for a 96th place finish in a WSOP preliminary event. Things started looking up again in 2010 when he scooped right around $100k over 4 live tourney cashes. The next year, Newhouse was well on his way to a deep run in the 2011 WSOP Main Event, but ran into Pius Heinz, the eventual winner of the championship bracelet, on day five, putting an abrupt end to his chip stack and sending him home in 182nd place with $47,107. Since then, Mark Newhouse has literally dropped off the live poker tournament radar.
Parallel to his live poker career, the American poker pro was having reasonable success on the virtual felt as well. What he lacked in live cashes he made up for in online poker wins. For instance, while Newhouse only earned $4k in live events in 2009, his profits were quite sizable in the online realm, including a 1st place win for $245,897 in the PokerStars Sunday Million. His final online tournament cash came in November of 2010 when he finished an FTOPS (Full Tilt Online Poker Series) event in 2nd for $140,000. Again, he dropped off the radar at that point, ending his career total of online poker tournament cashes at $579,353.
After 7 years of ups and downs, it would appear that Mark Newhouse has finally settled down, maturing in his poker career and aiming for the largest potential prize of his life. He and his fellow members of the November Nine are each guaranteed to scoop at least $733,224 for a 9th place finish, scaling up to $8,359,531 for the championship bracelet.
The 2013 WSOP Main Event November Nine has shaped up as follows, listed by chip stacks:
- JC Tran –38,000,000
- Amir Lehavot –29,700,000
- Marc-Etienne McLaughlin – 26,525,000
- Jay Farber – 25,975,000
- Ryan Riess – 25,875,000
- Sylvain Loosli – 19,600,000
- Michiel Brummelhuis – 11,275,000
- Mark Newhouse – 7,350,000
- David Benefield – 6,375,000
And finally, the calculated payouts for the 2013 WSOP Main Event November Nine will be as follows:
- 1st place: $8,359,531
- 2nd place: $5,173,170
- 3rd place: $3,727,023
- 4th place: $2,791,983
- 5th place: $2,106,526
- 6th place: $1,600,792
- 7th place: $1,225,224
- 8th place: $944,593
- 9th place: $733,224
Intriguing to see Newhouse’s journey in poker, though his financial choices are quite questionable.
The detailed history of Mark Newhouse in poker tournaments is intriguing, although I’m curious if early success impacted his long-term strategy. 🤔