Lance Oliver Wins Bayou Poker Challenge

  Nobody is surprised when somebody with an endorsement deal from PokerStars or Full Tilt wins a World Series of Poker circuit event. It raises a few eyebrows when the winner comes out of left field to kick the unsuspecting tails of the rest of the field. This is what happened at the 2008 Bayou Poker Challenge. Businessman Lance Oliver won this tournament and took home the coveted gold ring that is presented to all World Series of Poker Circuit winners in New Orleans.  Finding Oliver's tournament history is like trying to discover where the Holy Grail or Ark of the Covenant currently resides. In short, he has no real history to speak of. Of course this Roseville, California resident owns three businesses, and you don't succeed in business without being able to tap into some of the skills that make a person a good poker player.  Oliver was not the chip leader going into the final table. Claudia Crawford had a significant lead over Lance at the start. Oliver basically kept his head down and let other players take down the chip leader. He let his stack grow at a modest clip until he eliminated recent L.S.U. graduate James Arruebarrena with an unlikely bad beat. After that he put his foot on the neck of the rest of the field and took the victory.  The scariest thing about players like Lance Oliver is that when they get to the WSOP they are unknown quantities. Their opponents have no history to call on when dealing with people like Oliver. They only know that they are fairly good at poker and will spend a good bit of meaningful tournament time trying to figure them out. It is this sort of thing that makes the WSOP very interesting to watch.