Neymar nearly kicked out of WSOP event before 1st career cash

Soccer superstar Neymar earned his first career cash at the World Series of Poker on Sunday night.

The Brazilian made a deep run in the $1,000 buy-in Super Turbo Bounty No-Limit Hold’em freezeout event at Paris Las Vegas, finishing in 49th place out of 2,227 entrants for $3,959 plus bounties.

Neymar, 30, has been a regular at the WSOP the past week, playing tournaments and cash games. He entered the $10,000 buy-in Limit Hold’em Championship on June 12, but didn’t make it past Day 1 of the event.

The forward for Paris Saint-Germain is a recreational player and has played in several tournaments while representing the online poker site PokerStars. Before Sunday, he had about $28,000 in live career earnings, according to HendonMob.com.

According to the WSOP tournament updates, Neymar was nearly booted from the tournament area on the money bubble.

The participants were instructed to remain at their table, and spectators were asked to leave the room as tournament officials verified the number of players remaining.

While Neymar was talking to a group of friends at the rail, a security guard approached and said, “Sorry, guys, I gotta kick you out, you can’t stay here.” Neymar told the guard, “I’m playing” and returned to his seat.

After the dinner break, Neymar scored an elimination and had one of the larger chip stacks in the tournament. But he was unable to build and was eliminated about an hour later.

Neymar went all-in for 315,000 and was called by one player, who made a full house to take most of his opponent’s chips.

On the next hand, Neymar was forced all-in for his final 60,000 chips on the big blind and ante. Neymar’s pair of aces were no good against Florida player Wing Yam, who had a jack kicker to go with his pair of aces to eliminate the two-time South American footballer of the year.

Contact David Schoen at dschoen@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5203. Follow @DavidSchoenLVRJ on Twitter.