LAS VEGAS – Lonny Eisenberg wasn’t expecting his family to purchase him a seat at the 2024 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.

He didn’t think he would make it past Day 1.

The bursting of the money bubble caused an explosion of emotion.

The Amboy native and Mendota fire fighter shook his head in disbelief when he lasted until Day 5, finishing in 221st place with $60,000.

“I had a blast. I think these were the best five days of my life,” Eisenberg said. «We have a poker league in Mendota. It starts in April and goes until the following March. The two top point leaders and the guy who wins the final tournament, we send to the World Series of Poker to represent our poker league. I got lucky and won our first tournament and I told my family about it. They wanted to know how it works and I explained it to them.

“My sister, Lori Dees, who owns a home health agency in northern Illinois, asked ‘Why do you have to wait a whole year?’ I told her, ‘That’s how you have to win your spot.’ I think she talked to some of our other family members, and they surprised me by buying me a seat into the World Series of Poker.

“I was flabbergasted, I couldn’t believe this was happening.” 

The seat cost Eisenberg’s family $10,000.

Although he considered it sort of a birthday gift since they told him about the purchase around his birthday, May 8, he didn’t want to let his family down or make them think they wasted $10,000.

Instead, he played poker like a veteran against some of the best players in the world.

Eisenberg flew to Las Vegas on July 4 and sat at his first table on Friday, July 5, but he hardly played a hand because of nerves.

After having Saturday, July 6 off, he was back at the tables on Sunday, July 7, which is when his WSOP run really started as his chip stack began to rise.

Monday, July 8 was another off day before he made it to Tuesday, July 9. Once he made it to Tuesday, there were no more days off.

“I couldn’t believe I made it to Day 3. My chips stacks really took off on Tuesday. I got my chips up to $1.9 million,” Eisenberg said. “I stayed around there for a little while. On Wednesday, Day 4, we were waiting for the money bubble to burst. They have a number of people, which I think was 15 percent. Once there was only 15 percent of players left of the entire field, everyone remaining is in the money. They took the top 1,500 to be in the money, out of 10,000-plus players. It was exciting.

“My sister called me when the bubble burst. It was unbelievable. I was happy at that point. They could have sent me home and I would have felt accomplished. It just kept going. I made it through Wednesday and made Day 5, Thursday.”

Then right before dinner break on Thursday, Eisenberg ran into some trouble.

The first unfavorable big hand.

“I had a huge hand; I had an ace and a king. I made a big raise,” Eisenberg said. “This kid from Austria had about the same amount of chips I had called my raise. When they turned the flop, I flopped a straight. they call it “Broadway,” 10 through ace. I made a big bet, and the kid called me again. A seven came up and it didn’t mean anything, at least I thought, to either one of us.

“I looked at the board and there were two clubs. I was thinking to myself, ‘This kid is waiting for another club to come so he can get his flush.’ Being the amateur I am, I shoved all my chips on the table in the middle to make him really think about the risk of him getting knocked out of the tournament for fishing after a club. 

“That wasn’t the case. He had pocket 10s and there was a 10 on the board to give him three 10s. He called my big bet. The next card was another seven. We turned our cards over and he had a full boat with 10s over sevens to knock out my straight. That loss took me from 2.1 million chips down to 300,000 chips.”

If Eisenberg would have won the hand, he would have been the tournament leader because he would have had over five million chips when the current leader had 3.9 million.

The fire fighter got his stack back around the one million mark, but the pricey blinds caused him to hemorrhage roughly 100,000 in chips every time the blind made his way.

On his very last hand, he went all in with an ace and a jack. Another player called him with an ace and a king. Eisenberg received a jack on the flop, but a queen on the river gave his opponent a straight to eliminate Eisenberg.

“The support I got online and the ones filming the clips featuring me were fantastic. At one point, I got picked for a feature table,” Eisenberg said. “The only reason it happened was because we had two well-known pros at the table. The table was live streamed, and people back home got to watch. That’s really exciting.

“I heard my hometown bar, The Depot in Amboy, had it on the big screen and everyone was going crazy. My phone and my Facebook blew up for five days. it’s been wonderful. The support I got from everyone back home was really overwhelming. It was awesome.”

There were quite a few take aways and high points of his World Series of Poker trip.

Obviously, he won $60,000, met some poker professionals he watched on TV over the years, and was celebrated in two towns he calls home, Amboy and Mendota.

He also took away why playing the game he loves in those towns was important to the success he had in Vegas.

“The one thing I learned about the whole process is poker really is nothing more than luck. a lot of these pros, so called pros, are no different than the guys I play with in the poker league downstairs in the Moose Lodge in Mendota,” Eisenberg said. “They’ve won it once or twice and have enough money to keep coming back and trying it. They got some name recognition along the way by being toward the top of the leaderboard a few times. But the game itself is all luck.

“My dad, Larry Eisenberg, taught me how to play poker at an early age. I was probably six or seven years old. I remember my childhood best friends and I going to Jack’s Gun Shop in Amboy and the old guys would let us play penny poker with them. The love for poker started there. I’ve always loved it.

“In rural America, there isn’t a lot to do. Growing up as kids, someone would have a party and all of a sudden all of the quarters are coming out and everybody is playing poker.”