Daniel Strelitz opened the action with a raise to 4,800 in middle position, and Michael Souza responded by moving all in for his 35,000. Tyler Cornell was next to act, and he cold called the bet. It got back to Strelitz, and he sat back in his chair, and let out a big sigh. He was clearly facing a tough decision, as the all in move was for most of his chips. Eventually, he folded, saying that he had .
Souza:
Cornell:
Cornell never had to sweat as the board came down all low cards: . It ended up being a good fold for Strelitz, as Cornell hit his pair on the river. After winning that hand, Cornell is up to 130,000.
Robert Salaburu, last years Main Event eight place finisher for $971,360, has just been knocked out of the tournament. In a button (Thomas Gabriel) versus big blind (Robert Salaburu) situation all the chips went into the middle. Salaburu had king queen and wasn't able to spike anything against Gabriel's ace jack. Salaburu didn't have all that many chips to start the hand with so didn't seem to upset.
There was already a pot of around 45,000 in the middle when we arrived to see Victor Ramdin heads up with his opponent. The board had just completed , and Ramdin's opponent fired out 30,000. He spent quite some time in the tank, before dropping chips in to signify a call. His opponent rolled over for a full house, and Ramdin said "nice hand", rechecked his hole cards, then kicked them in.
After dropping that pot, Ramdin is down to 84,000.
Paul Spitzberg from Tenafly, New Jersey, is the chip leader of the tournament it looks like. He started the day with a little over 60,000 but has 380,000 right now. Spitzberg made a deep run in the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event where he finished 77th for $90,343. Can he pick up some new jewelry here this year?
When we got back from break, we noticed that Huy Nguyen's once massive chip stack had been cut down to just 52,000, but he quickly got back to work, winning a huge race to get back over 100,000. Nguyen got the rest of his money in preflop holding against his opponent's . The board ran clean for Nguyen, running down , and Nguyen made an unnecessary set on the river to take the double up.