That pesky volcanic cloud spinning off Iceland has grounded all flights out of the United Kingdom until at least 6:00pm this evening. That presents a problem for a number of players who are stuck now in London en route to this event, stuck either at the airport or at Paddington Station. Among those stranded without a way here are Peter Eastgate, Jason Mercier, Barry Greenstein, James Akenhead, and Chris Moorman.
PokerStars to the rescue!
From our spot in the media room, we can hear the staff scrambling to come up with a good solution. They've just booked a coach bus in London, and it's going to pick up the players and start the trek towards San Remo. We figure it's about 20 hours by bus, so we expect to see a few sleep-eyed players roll in at about 12:15pm tomorrow. That'll give them just enough time to take their seats before registration closes.
Talk about cutting it close. Either way, we'd give a day's wages to be on that bus ride.
Irene Baroni
Irene Baroni bet 8,500 on the river of a board only to find Mauro Stivoli move all-in against her.
She agonized for a good five minutes or so, clearly holding a a strong hand herself. Eventually though, she elected to fold, preferring to find a better spot.
Langmann in trouble
David Lloyd raised preflop to 525 and Andre Santos called before Florian Langmann bumped it up to 2,200 from the button. Rony Halimi reraised to 6,000 in the big blind quickly making Lloyd and Santos fold. Langmann asked how much Halimi had back before setting his opponent all-in, the Frenchman snap-called.
Halimi:
Langmann:
The board of meant Langmann lost a huge chunk of his stack as Halimi doubled up to 36,000.
Allan Bække (small blind) and one opponent (button) saw a flop. Bække checked and his opponent bet 1,000, but Bække now made it 2,350. Mr. Button spent a long while considering his options, and eventually folded, leaving himself with around 15,000 and a sour expression on his face.
We've got two for you. And not much else in the way of details. We bid good day to "Miami" John Cernuto and Pierre Neuville, slightly raising the average chip count in the room while slightly lowering the average age.
Mr. Minieri
It's all been going rather swimmingly for Dario Minieri since his slice of good fortune. He just picked up another multiway pot after betting 1,750 on a getting all his opponents to fold.
Meanwhile Laurence "rivermanl" Houghton is having slightly more trouble getting out of the starting blocks. He opened to 500 preflop and fired 650 more on the flop but had to give up when he was instantly check-raised by the big blind to 1,700.
With around 5,000 in the pot and three players in the hand by the flop, Marc Naalden (under the gun) bet out 3,700. The gentleman in the cutoff looked at his hole cards and presumably didn't like them as he folded. The gent in the small blind, however, spent some time counting various stacks of chips before flat-calling.
They went heads-up to the turn and Mr. Small Blind instantly announced all in. Naalden grinned broadly and folded.
A player opened to 450 and Rui Milhomens made the call. Stefan Mattson reraised to 1,650 behind and both players called.
The flop caming and it was checked to Mattson who bet 3,050. The first player folded but Milhomens check-raised to 7,900. Mattson made the call before they both checked the turn.
On the river, Milhomens fired out 11,050 and Mattson tanked before calling with . A good call since Milhomens could only show for a bluff.
Mikhail Tulchinskiy has lost a relatively hefty pot. We only saw the tail end of it, but the board had an ace, a king and three hearts on it, and Tulchinskiy's opponent was holding for a flush. Tulchinskiy mucked and dropped to 20,000.