$10,000 No Limit Hold'em Championship Day 3 | 2009 L.A. Poker Classic

02-23-2009 20:54 UTC-7

Timoshenko Flames Out

[user75032]

Yevgeniy Timoshenko worked hard to build his stack up to about 250,000 chips. In the space of one hand, it was all gone.

We came to the table with more than 100,000 chips already in the middle in a pot contested between Timoshenko and Donald D'Auria. There were four community cards already on board, {Q-Clubs}

. D'Auria led out for 60,000. Timoshenko double-checked the amount of the bet, then moved all in for 172,000. D'Auria called.

D'Auria: {A-Clubs}

Timoshenko: {K-Spades}

The table was stunned. Timoshenko could come up with only a gutshot draw to Broadway and some imagination. He was brutally eliminated from the tournament, just a few spots out of the money, by a river card that fell {J-Hearts}

.

"What do you do if a ten comes off in the end?" one player at the table asked D'Auria.

"I cry," D'Auria responded.

Shawn Glines seemed puzzled by Timoshenko's play. "I don't think he had enough chips to do that," said Glines.

Tags: Donald D'Auria Shawn Glines Yevgeniy Timoshenko

02-23-2009 20:58 UTC-7

Esfandiari's Vanishing Act Means Hand-for-Hand Commences

[user75032]

With 20 minutes left in the last level of the night, we're on the money bubble. Sixty-four players remain.

Antonio Esfandiari was the unlucky player eliminated in 65th place. He shoved for 120,000 over an open-raise by one player and a reraise to 30,000 by Mike Sowers. The original raiser folded, but Sowers tanked and eventually called with {A-?}

. Esfandiari showed {A-?}

, but he never improved his hand and Sowers did. A queen on the turn ended Esfandiari's L.A. Poker Classic Main Event tantalizingly short of the money.

Tags: Antonio Esfandiari Mike Sowers

02-23-2009 21:21 UTC-7

Programming Note

[user75032]

We reached the end of Level 16 still on the bubble. The determination has been made to play on until the bubble bursts. There have already been two all-in survivals; one player called all in with {A-Spades}

on a board of {9-Spades}

and found himself against {9-Clubs}

. The

hit the turn, and the river was the non-repeating {6-Clubs}

. That left the player who flopped a set with just 9,000 chips.

On a different table, David Pham put his opponent all in for 52,000 on a board of {10-Diamonds}

. Pham's opponent called with {A-Diamonds}

; Pham had total air with {K-Hearts}

. The turn {Q-Diamonds}

briefly made things interesting, giving Pham a gutshot straight draw. But the river was the {7-Spades}

. Pham is another short stack now, with just 27,000 left.

And so we play on.

Level: 17

Blinds: 2,000/4,000

Ante: 500

02-23-2009 21:45 UTC-7

Patrick Stemper is the Bubble Boy

[user75032]

David Daneshgar just barely managed to squeak into the money. He lost almost all of his chips earlier in the bubble, running pocket kings into pocket aces. That loss left him with just 1,500 chips, but Patrick Stemper (the player whose middle set was out-turned by a flush) was also short. The two players wound up all in before the deal on the same hand, but at different tables. Stemper was all in from the small blind; Daneshgar was all in for the ante.

Stemper wound up heads up against one player who had raised preflop with {7-Hearts}

. Stemper turned over {Q-Diamonds}

, but didn't connect with a board of {10-Hearts}

. He was eliminated; that meant that Daneshgar would, at worst, chop 63rd place with Stemper. He was freerolling for the whole thing.

At Daneshgar's table, Nenad Medic raised preflop and was called by Dan Lu. The two players checked a flop of {2-Clubs}

; Medic tried a bet of 20,000 on the {3-Hearts}

turn, but Lu called. Both players checked the {8-Hearts}

river. Lu took down the side pot with {A-Clubs}

, just ace high; Daneshgar squeezed out {Q-Hearts}

for trip threes and the winning hand.

"David's eight-tupled up," joked Matt Savage. Indeed he did. More importantly, all of the 63rd-place money will go to him. With that, play is done for the night.

Tags: David Daneshgar Patrick Stemper

02-23-2009 21:52 UTC-7

Day 3 Ends with 63 Happy Players

[user75032]

That's it for us from Day 3 at the L.A. Poker Classic. It was an exciting bubble to end an exciting day, as we saw the chip leader, Antonio Esfandiari, eliminated just short of the money; a wild style of play from the new chip leader, Kofi Farkye that allowed him to gobble up massive amounts of chips as play tightened up; one of the grizzled old-school pros, Chris Ferguson, double up to almost 400,000 on the bubble by flopping two pair; and two players crippled in big hands that then wound up all in before the deal on the final hand.

We tried to eyeball all of the stacks on the bubble. It appears that Farkye is the overnight chip leader with more than 800,000 chips; he's followed by Mike Sowers and Donald D'Auria, each of whom eclipsed 700,000.

There are a bunch of extremely short stacks in the field. We'll hopefully have all of the counts entered into the chip counts page before play begins tomorrow at noon. The pace of eliminations will be a bit frenetic! See you then.

Tags: Kofi Farkye

$10,000 No Limit Hold'em Championship

Day 3 Completed