Final Table Player Bio: John Hadley

Seat 1. John Hadley

John Hadley is from Santa Cruz, California, and he will take the second largest chip stack into the WPT Rolling Thunder final table. He has nine previous cashes in his poker career, and his total earnings stand at $10,065. Hadley is also on a freeroll at this point, and he told us how he acquired his seat shortly after the conclusion of play on Day 3. “I play at the Livermore Casino, and I qualified for enough points, and then what they do is they do a lot of things here with Thunder Valley. I’ve played in two or three of them from seats I won there. They had 40 players, and four of us got seats, so it didn’t cost anything to play. It’s a freeroll of a freeroll.”

Hadley came on strong late during playdown to the final table, but he was in the right place at the right time to accumulate a lot of chips. “It was up and down today, I started with 471, I had about 400 when we went to six players, went down to about 120, and then I pushed all in about three or four times, doubled up a couple times. I just kept getting good cards, made the right bets at the right time, bluffed at the right time, and had the hands at the right time,” said Hadley.

Thw 57-year-old has played in big tournaments before, but he counts making this final table as his greatest accomplishment in poker. “I’ve played a couple of the Shooting Stars, and here when I’ve played a couple of tournaments I always made it to three or four away from the money, and today I got into the money,” said Hadley.