Marc Lavergne wins $32,000 from a free satellite ticket

Marc Lavergne checked his partypoker account a couple of weeks ago and discovered that he’d received a free $11 satellite ticket as part of our random ticket drops. He went on to turn that free $11 ticket into a $32,000 score, here’s his story.

Marc is a 33-year-old from Ottawa, Ontario in Canada and part of our Canadian Facebook Community forum. A proud father of two and entrepreneur by day (Marc has been running Top Notch Moving Services for five years), he is a budding poker player by night.

Like many, Marc started playing poker after the poker boom of 2003 and after watching the cult classic Rounders. Marc started playing mostly freerolls before taking the plunge and making a deposit. He then began entering micro-stakes tournaments because he never had the bankroll to play in the bigger buy-in games. That has now all changed.

The road to a free $32,000

Marc in action at the Playground Poker Club

After receiving the free $11 satellite ticket, Marc bought into the $11 buy-in Power Series Mega Satellite and managed to win a $109 ticket. Marc then entered a $109 buy-in satellite and grinded his way to the money where he received a $1,050 ticket for his effort. As these tickets have a seven-day expiry date on them, Marc jumped straight into the $1,050 Big Tuesday Bounty Hunter tournament and it turned out to be a great decision on his part.

“Even though I won a free satellite ticket to the $1,050 from a FREE ticket, I respected the high roller buy in and played my heart out. There were many many beasts and wizards. Every player I searched up had average buy in’s of $200 or more with over $250 000 scores,” said Marc, “I didn’t let that get to my head and just played my game. I played ABC poker until I made it in the money and already locked up $1000 in bounties. At that moment on, I was super happy to make some cold hard cash from a free satellite ticket and didn’t have any regrets no matter what happened.”

Rubbing shoulders with Team partypoker

Marc clashed with Roberto Romanello and almost sent him to the rail

After a mixture of solid play and a little bit of luck, Marc found himself deep in the money and came close to eliminating Team partypoker’s Roberto “WelshWizard” Romanello. Roberto opened from the button, the small blind called and Marc three-bet all-in from the big blind while holding a pair of aces. Roberto called the all-in with pocket eights, Marc’s aces held and his stack was boosted to 1.5 million, a top 10 stack, while Roberto was left nursing a tiny stack of 23,000 chips.

Marc eventually found himself heads-up with almost even stacks so suggested to his opponent that they may want to make a deal. His opponent politely declined and the one-on-one battle began. Marc gained the upper hand and led by 13 million to five million, but his opponent turned the tables on him when Marc’s eights lost to ace-ten courtesy of a ten on the flop.

Mission accomplished: $32,000 for free

Not one to give up, Marc battled back and was almost level with his opponent again, so at the scheduled break, Marc again asked about a possible deal. His opponent agreed to look at the numbers and eventually agreed upon a 49/51 split and they got to keep their own bounties.

“At that moment it started to sink in that I won $32,000 USD for FREE.”

A much-needed new car is now on the cards for Marc, plus a little investment into his business, but he also plans to “never play micro tournaments again!”

“I am proud to be part of the partypoker community on Facebook. This group is a great place to talk with other poker players, analyse different scenarios and get constructive criticism. It is also a great place to learn about new events or upcoming new promotions. Above all, the admin team does a fantastic job answering any questions or concerns from anyone.

“Partypoker has a great software and smaller fields with amazing guarantees. I would truly recommend anyone to take a shot and try out the fantastic tournaments with amazing structures. Thank you partypoker for the generous offers, gifts and stellar customer service!”

Congratulations to Marc for turning a free $11 satellite ticket into $32,000!

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