Just now we arrived near the conclusion of an interesting hand between Todd Terry and Mike Linster. Subsequent table talk revealed the hand had begun with a Terry opening raise from early position and a call from Linster, with another player coming along from the blinds.
By the river only Terry and Linster remained, with the board showing . Terry checked, Linster bet, and Terry called.
"One pair," said Linster before showing his cards. "I have a pair, too," said Terry. "A pretty good one," he added, tabling his . Then Linster flipped over his , and the table laughed in response.
Afterwards Linster joked he'd said "one pair" because he was ready for Terry to show two pair and he could muck without revealing how he'd played the hand.
That hand kept Terry under the 20,000-chip mark, although on the very next one he'd reraise all in to pick up a preflop pot to add a few more to his below-average stack as the players push through Level 9.
Pradeep Deshpande was the only player to enter the Main Event four times and he's making the fourth time count.
He is up to about 72,000 after eliminating Seth Zimmerman. Deshpande was behind with against Zimmerman's (who was all in preflop for 11,875), but caught up as the board ran out to score the elimination.
Ryan D'Angelo opened the pot with a raise to 1,800 and was called by Felix Kim from the next seat over. Micah Raskin three-bet to 6,500 from the hijack, getting D'Angelo to fold.
Kim, though, went all in for 16,000. Raskin called after a few moments with , leading Kim's .
"Jack please, Tony," asked Raskin of Tony the dealer.
The flop came down to keep Raskin ahead, and Tony did in fact deliver the on the turn. That gave Kim extra outs to survive, but the river was not one of them.
Shortly after Dan Buzgon enjoyed that double up, his tourney run was ended in the final hand of Level 9.
Jake Schwartz opened with a raise from middle position, then the opponent sitting to his left reraised to 3,550. It folded to Buzgon who reraised again to 7,250, and when the action came back to Schwartz he repopped it again to 15,300. Schwartz's neighbor folded, but Buzgon reraised all in and Schwartz called.
Schwartz had and Buzgon . The flop came , and Buzgon's kings were still best. But the turn brought the to pair Schwartz, and after the river Buzgon was out.