A cardiac arrest at Foxwood’s poker room – three doctors respond. “An hour and 20 minutes into this tournament, one player suddenly clutched his throat, gasping for air. Turning deep red, he toppled unconscious to the floor. Three doctors dropped their cards and rushed to his aid – a neurosurgeon, a pediatrician and a 72-year-old retired vascular surgeon from Thompson, Pa., by the name of Will Noyes. The patient was unresponsive and in cardiac arrest, so Dr. Noyes administered mouth-to-mouth cardiopulmonary resuscitation until, 10 minutes later, he felt a pulse returning. A team of emergency medical technicians then arrived with a defibrillator and removed the patient by ambulance to a hospital, where his recovery continued until he was sent home.

Dr. Noyes later told me that he has responded to quite a few similar emergencies, not surprising when you consider that he plays a lot of tournaments and each one puts hundreds of people into a room for long hours under considerable pressure, increasing the actuarial odds that someone will experience a health crisis. ‘When one of these situations presents itself,’ he told me, ‘I do what I have to do as a physician.'”