Even if Mike Matusow wasn't seated at the feature table today, it wouldn't be difficult to find him. Matusow and three others saw a flop of and two players checked to the player in the cutoff, who bet 700. Matusow called on the button, the small blind came along and the big blind folded. On the turn, action was checked over to Matusow, who fired 2,500. Only the small blind called, and the landed on the river. Both players checked, and "The Mouth" tabled for the winner.
"Some people wait for the aces, I look for the queen-seven," Matusow said as he raked in the pot.
Moments later, a familiar face took a seat at the feature table. Last year, Randy Pfeifer outlasted a field of 202 players to win the $1,500 Deepstacks Poker Tour Seneca Niagara Poker Open for $62,265. He's now seated directly to Matusow's left.
Mike "The Mouth" Matusow continues to harass fellow DeepStacks Pro Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi from his seat at the feature table.
Every few minutes he turns around to his table and asks the 2010 November Niner if he's busted yet.
Matusow is being quite relentless and although Mizrachi isn't taking the bite, he did get a chunk taken out of his stack recently.
The Grinder defended his big blind against an early-position raise and led out for 300 chips on the flop. But when his opponent called, he checked the turn.
His opponent tapped the table as well and both also checked the river.
"I have an ace" Mizrachi's opponent claimed, forcing him to muck.
We just caught Robert Croak making his way out of the tournament area. According to Croak, he got his chips in with pocket kings on a board, but his opponent had a set of deuces and scooped Croak's stack when a blank hit the river.
The famed creater of Silly Bandz is one of the early casualties of the day.
The players have gone on their first 15-minute break of the day. Right now, the tournament board reads 206 players, with 200 still remaining, but registration is still open for another two levels.
The featured table was the first to break today, sending Mike Matusow to one of the outer tables with two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Mihn Nguyen. Micheal Mizrachi has now been moved over to the feature table. We'll see if his fortune changes with the tv cameras rolling.
Mizrachi, Matusow and Nguyen are the only dual bracelet winners we've spotted in the field so far. Team DeepStacks Pro Randal Flowers, meanwhile, is a two-time champion on the World Poker Tour.
A couple of local players have begun building big stacks here at DeepStacks Niagara in the early going.
Rochester's Russ Campanella made quad sevens to take all of one opponent's chips and is now sitting on 42k.
But the biggest stack in the room so far appears to belong to Lewiston's Anthony Mazzarella, who made a huge call with top-top against a weaker ace and has been steadily building ever since.
He's now on 50k and seperating quickly from the pack.
Niagara Area native Dietrich Kuhlmann now finds himself on the top of the chip counts as the day's third level winds down.
He called down a three-barrel bluff with just a pair of sixes to rake one rather large pot, then ended up on the right end of a flush-over-flush debacle to get it up and over the 50k mark.