Wheels in Motion: Day 1b Chip Leader Nick Raio Talks Poker and New Business

By Sean Chaffin

Nick Raio (pictured) is not getting ahead of himself. After finishing as the Day 1b chip leader in the WPT bestbet Bounty Scramble, he knows there’s still a lot of work to be done. He’s been in this position before and things didn’t always end the way he hoped.

“It feels pretty awesome,” he said after the day’s action on Saturday. “Quite a few times I’ve had the chip lead and I didn’t get as far as I wanted. I’d get in the money, but didn’t get as deep as I wanted. It happened twice in Hollywood [at the Seminole Hard Rock] last year. I was chip leader coming back with 1,500 people and also an HPT event. I came back with a monster chip lead in both and still pretty much ended with a min-cash.”

Overall, Raio progressed up on Saturday with a few big hands including flopping a set against another player with A-K for all the chips. He also had a big hand with Q-Q against A-K. A big pot right in the last couple hands of the night rocketed him up the chip counts when he rivered a nut flush with .

While he’s still got a lot of poker left to play, Raio has some poker skills to bag a title. He’s a regular in Florida poker rooms and has over $121,000 in live tournament winnings including a win in a $360 event at the Seminole Hard Rock Tampa event for $11,040. In 2018, he also finished runner-up in a $200 event here at bestbet for $10,000.

Raio is from the Jacksonville area. After spending the last few years playing cards, he’s had to dial back his poker schedule. Poker’s been put on the back burner a bit because he recently purchased a business that sells commercial trucks and trailers.

“I’ve been doing that for the last six months,” says Raio, a father of 4-year-old twins. “That’s been taking up a lot of my time, so I really haven’t been playing as many tournaments this year.”

The new venture, CMD Trailers Sales and Leasing, has him excited about the future and he’s learning as much as he can about the industry. 

“I’m very fortunate with the company I ended up buying into because my partner has been doing it for 40 years,” he says. “He’s taken me under his wing even though I paid to buy into the company. The agreement we have is that I’m going to be buying him out over the next five years. It’s just a lot to learn, but business is going well.”

It’s also been going well at the tables here in Jacksonville and Raio hopes to keep on trucking.

Sean Chaffin is a freelance writer in Crandall, Texas, and his work appears in numerous websites and publications. Follow him on Twitter @PokerTraditions.