A daring bluff from Nik Persaud went completely wrong as after a bit of a dwell-up his opponent flat-called Persaud's big river bet at the end of a board. Persaud was forced to turn over just for absolutely nothing, and his opponent scooped the sizeable pot with .
Kevin MacPhee has been knocked out on the cusp of the bubble, he 4-bet shoved with against the big blind's and got snap-called, unable to catch on the board.
"All right, good luck guys," Chino Rheem said, standing from his chair. He was all in for 42,700 with , only to see his opponent turn up the one-better .
You may have heard that Chino runs good, though. Such was the case this time as the flop came , drawing no reaction from either player. If anything, there was a little bit of a bummed-out look on Chino's face. The kept him in the lead with trip eights, and the case dropped on the river just to rub it in.
Chino apologized, "Sorry, my friend," shaking his head and genuinely frowning. We can't imagine he'll be too upset to squeak into the money here, though, and his new stack of about 90,000 should help facilitate that.
UK circuit regular Mohammed Barkatul opened for 11,500 under the gun - and must have been delighted when he found himself faced with a reraise to 26,000 from Jamie Brown in mid position and a cold four-bet to 64,000 from the young gentleman in the hijack. Barkatul shoved for an additional 64,200 and a sheepish Brown folded (accompanied by a, "Ha!" from Joe Hachem across the table). The gent in the hijack did not look like he wanted to call, but kind of had to, so did the decent thing.
Barkatul:
Hijack:
Board:
Barkatul repeatedly thanked the dealer as he stacked up his new 290,000 stack.
As Eoin O'Dea just failed to eliminated a rather loud Italian player with against on a flop after the turn and river, our eye turned over to a huge pot on the table next door.
David Vamplew was eliminating Paul Kristofferson with the board reading . Vamplew's winning hand of while the of the Swede had already gone into the muck. Vamplew had Kristofferson covered in a pot that was over the 1 million mark, which puts him at nearly double anyone else in the tournament.
It's hard to put into words how catastrophic the EPT bubbles can be sometimes. Everyone is kicked out of the tournament area, including the press who actually need to see what's going on. When a player is all in during hand-for-hand play, that table is swarmed by fifty or so players and spectators pushing and elbowing their way into each other to try and catch a glimpse of the action. Plus four guys with about 50 pounds of camera gear apiece. When the hand is over, the players all race back to their chairs, knocking over what or whoever is in their way so that they can make it back to their table before the dealer mucks their cards for the next hand.
We'd imagine Phil Ivey wasn't to thrilled about the circus around him, and he's decided to just take his stack of about 200,000 and call it a night. His chair is empty, and the job of bagging up his chips tonight will be handled by a member of the staff.
A very short-stacked Steffan Lamaeli was all in for just 13,300 before the flop, and he was in good shape. He turned over , looking to hold against for the double up.
The flop brought him another ace, and the board ran out , and that's that.
Lamaeli's still in the game, up around 30,000 now.