After being out of the poker spotlight for the couple of years leading up to 2013, Mark Newhouse stormed back into the poker world’s consciousness with his run at the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event. Heading into Day 7, Newhouse was able to amass 5.78 million in chips, good for the 15th place slot among the 27 survivors remaining. He ultimately took ninth in the 2013 Main Event for $733,000.

Newhouse’s tournament poker career was meteoric in its beginning. A part of the poker boom in the mid-2000s, Newhouse won the World Poker Tour’s Borgata Poker Open in 2006 to take down a $1.5 million score, his largest ever tournament cash heading into the 2013 WSOP Main Event, in only his second ever tournament score.

The Chapel Hill, North Carolina native who now calls Las Vegas home went on to record a total of 15 more cashes up to 2011, when he suddenly disappeared from the tournament circuit. For his career, Newhouse has racked up over $2 million in tournament earnings.

Newhouse would face some difficult opposition as Day 7 of the Main Event played out. Sitting on his direct left was veteran poker pro J.C. Tran, on a big stack of 11.9 million chips, while Fabian Ortizand Sylvain Loosli(two top ten stacks), were in his potential “attack zone” from the hijack and the lojack positions. If that weren’t enough, chip leader Anton Morgenstern was on the button when Newhouse has the big blind.

If there’s a player who could battle with these big stacks, however, it was Newhouse, who has previously shown that he can handle the pressures of tournament poker and parlayed his heater into a ninth place finish.

In the 2014 Main Event, he was back at it, making a run at back-to-back final tables and finishing Day 6 sitting in first place out of 79 players left. He bagged 7.4 million chips, which is more than he had at the start of the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event final table.

Newhouse’s surge in the 2014 Main Event began on Day 5 soon after the bubble broke. He found himself in a coin flip situation against Munir Shahin when Shahin got it all-in on a flop of 2s-9h-7s. Shahin’s Kc-Kh looked good against Newhouse’s As-Qs when the 3h hit on the turn. However, destiny appeared to be on Newhouse’s side when he spiked the Ts on the river, completing the nut flush and sending Shahin to the rail in 244th place.

Players at the table were well aware of Newhouse’s run in 2013, with one player asking Newhouse, “Back-to-back?” Newhouse took it in stride and commented back with, “Yeah, that’s the plan.”