Alvarado Turns Up the Heat

Since his double-up before the break against Victor Chong, JC Alvarado has become increasingly active and has climbed almost to the top of the ladder.

The only man standing in his way is Weizhou Zha and the two have not long played a decent sized pot together. Before that however, we caught Alvarado and Linh Tran tangling in a hand.

It was Tran who was the pre-flop raiser, making it 5,500 to go from middle position and Alvarado made the call from the small blind to take the action heads-up to a flop.

The action went check, check and the came in on the turn and brought an 8,500 Alvarado bet with it. Tran made the call and the river completed the hand, but not the betting.

After thinking it over for a few minutes Alvarado fired for 17,000 and Tran had a decision to make as, with 38,000 behind, the bet represented a significant portion of his chips.

Eventually, Tran made the call and Alvarado turned over for bottom pair and it was good. Tran dropped to 21,000 while Alvarado climbed to roughly 138,000.

Then Alvarado applied the heat to Weizhou Zha the following hand in a blind versus blind battle. We are not sure what the pre-flop action was as we picked up the hand on the turn with the board reading just as Alvarado led out for a bet of 8,500 into a pot of close to the same.

Zha thought it over but eventually made the call and the came in on the river. This saw Alvardo bet big and he splashed out a chunky bet of 45,000 to send Zha deep into the tank, where he remained for several minutes before finding the fold and leaving Alvarado to scoop another and climb to 160,000 while Zha dropped to what looked to be 167,000.