Aristedes and the Black Sea
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The first few orbits of an elite event like today's WPT World Championship are usually much ado about nothing, with the world's best players feeling one another out while contesting small pots of minor consequence.
Sometimes the deck has other ideas though, distributing premium pocket pairs early in the day to light the fuse and begin the firework show early. Unfortunately for Aristedes Santana, he came out on the wrong end of a brutal cooler, with his 
falling to the 
held by Joseph Wertz on only the second deal of the day.
We missed the action firsthand, but according to a joint rundown provided by the ever helpful floorwoman Kellie and Wertz himself, a general idea of the action has been developed.
As told by Wertz, the action began with an open to 350 before Santana made it 850 to play. Wertz then four-bet to something like 2,100 and Santana went for the gusto by five-betting to 11,500. Wertz then six-bet shoved for the rest of his 50,000 starting stack, and after a very brief moment of deliberation, Santana called off with his cowboys.
The final board rolled out with a diamond four-flush, but neither player held a fifth and the huge pot was awarded to the owner of aces in the hole. Wertz is obviously the early chip leader, and judging by yesterday's end-of-day counts he already has about half of the amount needed to chase down Paul Volpe to top the Day 2 counts.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
105,000 | |
|
Busted |