We pick up a heads-up pot on the flop as the board shows . JC Alvarado is first to act, and he checks over to his lone opponent. Ralph Shannon moved all in, having Alvarado covered, and the pro would take several minutes to make his decision. Deep in the tank, he counted and re-counted his own chip stack, shooting the occasional glance across the table. Finally, he did indeed make the call, putting his tournament life at risk.
Showdown
Alvarado:
Shannon:
Alvarado had started with the dominating hand, but Shannon's two pair had pulled him into the lead. The turn gave Alvarado a couple extra outs, but the that hit the river was a blank. Failing to come back from behind, JC Alvarado has been eliminated.
We got the details of this hand after it happened, but the story is a pretty common one. Victor Ramdin was getting short stacked and pushed all in with ace-jack. He got called by Jan Skampa holding aces.
The aces held up and Ramdin went to the rail.
***Hand Update***
Ramdin was holding while his Skampa held . The final board ran out , giving Skampa a full house of sixes and aces.
We finally have our first heads-up table of Round 2. At Table 60 in the corner of the room, the two remaining players are sitting at opposite ends of the table, setting up a stare-down heads-up match. Ralph Shannon has a slight lead over Nick Binger, sitting with 250,000 to Binger's 200,000.
In another hand where a player moved in a with a weak kicker, Howard Boyd's short-stack shove with didn't work the way he wanted when he got called by Ronnie Chin who held .
When neither player improved on a board of , Chin's kicker played and Boyd was bounced from the event.