2023 WSOP Paradise
Ori Elul raised to 35,000 out of the small blind and kept one single T-1,000 chip behind. Marcelo Betto slowly peeled his card and Elul sweated with him, peeking in as granted by the Brazilian which prompted some laughter at the table.
Betto then sighed, eventually tossed chips forward and they agreed to get it in preflop.
Ori Elul: K♥8♥
Marcelo Betto: J♦9♠
Elul stayed ahead on the 7♣6♦2♦ flop and 7♠ turn but the 9♦ river sealed his fate.
"Good luck guys," he said on the way out.
On the former feature table, Rob Mariano claimed a pot by betting the J♥8♠5♥2♣ and preserved a stack of around 15 blinds with Josh Arieh sitting on a very similar amount.
One table over, there was an all-in and call all but completed. The cards of Yizhou Huang were already mucked and he paid off an unbeatable hand. Jorge Ribeiro had rivered quads with the 5♠5♣ on a board of K♣9♥5♦Q♠5♥ and pulled well ahead of Huang.
Renji Mao jammed out of the small blind into the big blind of Rafael Robles and the latter happily called with the A♠A♣. Mao only had Kx4x and the "standard cooler" as joked upon by other players at the table brought no upset.
Robles had little to fear on the A♦K♣Q♥8♥4♣ runout.
Several other players were not as fortunate as the field dropped to 121 hopefuls.
Sergei Gurin got his last 96,000 in preflop with the 8♦8♣ and Tamas Lendvai accepted the flip with the A♥Q♦.
The pair stayed ahead on the K♠6♦4♦5♥7♦ board and Gurin doubled with an eight-high straight.
Daniel Negreanu raised to 16,000 and Chin Wei Lim three-bet to 40,000. What followed was the announcement of Negreanu "I am all-in" as he grabbed the smart phone to record a potential showdown.
Lim, however, quickly surrendered and Negreanu clarified he was playing rather tight, then showed "a good hand" in J♥J♦.
"Just trying to sneak into the money," Negreanu added and Lim nodded "me too".
On Day 1a, Lim had been one of two players eliminated on the money bubble and will certainly hope to avoid the same fate this time.
Nikole Trentacosta was all-in with a shorter stack on the Q♦5♣3♣8♠ turn while in the big blind and Aleksandr Timoshenko looked her up from the hijack.
Nikole Trentacosta: 7♣6♣
Aleksandr Timoshenko: K♣Q♥
Trentacosta's straight and flush draw hit on the 9♣ river and she avoided elimination without a payday for now.
Another table breaks as the field has been whittled down to just 115 players and the money bubble is fewer than two dozen eliminations away. Among those to depart was also Aladin Mrkaljevic, who ran into the A♦A♣ of Jhon Diaz. The J♣J♦9♦6♦5♦ board gave Diaz the ace-high flush.
Level: 17
Blinds: 5,000/10,000
Ante: 10,000
Jessica Teusl raised to 18,000 just before the blinds went up and Troy Quenneville just flat-called from one seat over on the button. Andrei Shapovalov then moved all-in for around 350,000 and Teusl folded, Quenneville snap-called and caught his table neighbour with the fingers in the cookie jar.
Andrei Shapovalov: 8♣8♥
Troy Quenneville: A♠A♥
The inferior pair never stood a chance on the K♣7♣3♥9♠9♣ runout and both stack sizes were verified before the massive pot was shipped to Quenneville.