In the final hand of play Alec Torelli was down to his last 4,500 and all in preflop and John Tabatabai made the call.
Tabatabai:
Torelli:
The flop was all Tabatabai when it landed to make him trip sevens. The turn was the and river the and John Tabatabai becomes our Australian Heads Up Champion!
Alec Torelli collects another runner-up finish in a major Heads Up event following his 2nd place finish to Kenny Tran at the WSOP. We think that AU$60,000 should ease the pain a little.
Meanwhile John Tabatabai collects the Aussie Millions Gold Ring and AU$100,000!
Alec Torelli reraised to 2,400 from the button and John Tabatabai made the call.
The flop came down and Tabatabai checked from the big blind to Torelli who bet 2,600. Tabatabai then moved all in and Torelli was forced to give it up.
Tabatabai has 31,200 and a strong hold on the ring as Torelli is down to 8,800.
Some incredible developments have just occured during the heads up final. After playing for several minutes, it was then decided that the chips would be changed from the "older style" tournament chips which are used for weekly tournaments here at the Crown, to the newer "major tournament style" chips.
Everything seemed to go smoothly and play continued.
After another twenty minutes of play and several double ups, Torelli looked at Tabatabai's stack and asked him how many chips he had.
"33,000" came the reply from Tabatabai.
"Well I have 17,000" said Torelli.
After some 2nd-grade math, it was realized that an extra 10,000 chips had crept into play during the chip change-over as the total amount of chips should've been 40,000.
The tournament supervisor was called over and a lengthy discussion held as to the best approach to resolve the matter. In the end, both players generously agreed to restart the match.
So play is once again underway, with the scoreboard still reading 0 vs 0 and the chip counts starting at 20,000 vs 20,000!
Alec Torelli has stemmed the tide. Down to 7,225 chips, he moved all in with and was called by John Tabatabai's . The board ran out to give Torelli a chip-infusion. He's up to more than 14,000.
John Tabatabai has been working away at Alec Torelli. Another pot of 8,000 chips was shipped his way after both players checked the river on a board that read . Those 8,000 chips alllowed Tabatabai to open up a more than two-to-one chip lead over Torelli.
Alec Torelli raised to 1,200 and was called by John Tabatabai. Tabatabai led out for 1,325 on a flop of , then snap-mucked when Torelli raised him to 3,900.