Merulla Busts Panayiotou
![[user253757]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
Robert Merulla is on a tear lately, crippling Matthew Mendez by winning a coin flip before making a full house with pocket kings and getting extreme value from Matthew Parry.
He kept the heater going in a recent hand with Eracles Panayiotou's.
Merulla opened for 42,000 from middle position and Panayiotou decided to three-bet for about half his stack, making it 115,000 to go and leaving only 126,000 behind. This is when Merulla began to set his trap, sitting for thirty seconds or so and acting as if he had a tough decision to work through. After putting on the disguise of a man disgusted with having to put the chips forward, Merulla moved a stack of hot pink T25000 chips forward.
A pot-committed Panayiotou snap-called with his 
but was shocked to discover Merulla hid a secret in the hole: 
.
"You had to think about it that long huh?" asked Panayiotou, not pleased with the deceptive play being used against him even though everybody at the table knew his chips were going in the middle the moment he three-bet.
The flop came down 
and Panayiotou asked for a jack to come on fourth street, searching for additional outs that never came. When the turn came 
his tournament was over, and the meaningless 
completed the board on the river.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
2,356,000 | 256,000 |
|
Busted |