Player Focus: THAY3R

2007 has been a good year so far in the high stakes MTTs for Thayer Rasmussen aka “THAY3R” or “JINXY_MONKEY”. The 23-year-old University of Central Florida student has been tearing up some of the highest stakes tournaments in the world. Although a successful tournament and cash game pro for the past three years, the past nine months have brought unprecedented success for Thayer in both live and online tournaments.

Not content with just winning the Full Tilt 1k Monday for $63,700 in April, he followed it up by finishing fourth in the PokerStars $1,000 buy-in Sunday million tournament, beating 1,483 runners for a cool $88,179. This has been complemented by numerous other large wins, the UltimateBet 35k, the Full Tilt $200 HORSE event – the list goes on and on.

Unlike many of the big winning pros, Thayer has also been able to record results in some of the most prestigious tournaments in the world, particularly the WSOP and WPT events. Following three cashes in the 2006 World Series of Poker, Thayer cashed three times again this year at the WSOP in a selection of events ranging from HORSE to 6-handed holdem. A refreshing change from the majority of online pro player’s staple diet of 9-handed holdem.

Perhaps the greatest result of the year (if not his career) came in the WPT Mandalay bay main event, a $10,000 buy-in event with 228 entrants, coming fourth for his largest ever tournament win - $131,170. The manner of his exit from this tournament also shows how slim the margins can be at this level of play: Thayer re-shoved the ever aggressive Shawn Buchanan (the eventual winner) with As-Th only to be called by Shawn with Ac-Jd and failing to improve.

And just in case anyone was going to say that this live performance was a lucky break, Thayer could always remind them that he also took down the first of the WPT Mandalay events for a mere $33,000.

An all-round player as capable of playing NLH in a cash game as he is Omaha hi-lo in a WSOP tournament, Thayer is a player the poker community will be hearing about for a long time to come. Next year’s WSOP will probably be the place to look for Thayer, dressed in Bodog gear (he is a long-term Bodog player, qualifying for the main event with them and cashing over $22,000 in their tournaments) taking on the best in the game, fighting for mind bending sums of money and perhaps that all important little bit of jewellery.


View THAY3R's PVi Profile here


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