The board read by the time we got there and Alexander Strauss had bet out 37,500 from the small blind position. Jesus Ramos Vazquez on the button made it 75,000 to go, and then relaxed back into his massage, nodding gently to whatever appropriate tunes were on his ipod.
Strauss spent a long time looking tortured and eventually re-popped to 137,500. He was rewarded by a speedy fold from Vazquez.
No one knew much about Vlad Zguba when he joined Team PokerStars Pro as a representative of Ukraine, but he continues to impress the skeptical with his deep run here. In a recent hand, he faced Mathias Kuerschner heads up. Zguba checked the flop, and Kuerschner bet 55,000. Zguba thought for a minute before sliding out two yellow stacks. He looks intimidating with his grim countenance and reflective sunglasses no matter what, but with a 200,000-chip bet to back him up, he's even scarier. Kuerschner tanked for three minutes. "Jacks," he said. "I think you have jacks." Eventually Kuerschner gave it up, leaving himself with 230,000. Vlad is up to 640,000.
Sam Chartier opened the action with a raise to 18,000 from middle position. Action folded over to Ruslan Prydryk in the cutoff seat and he had just 30,500 chips. After some time in the tank, he moved all in. Action then moved to Lennart Holz in the small blind. He tanked for a couple minutes before finally making the call.
Action then went back to Chartier and he asked if he could reraise. The dealer informed him that he could. After a minute or so, Chartier announced that he was all in. Holz stared down at his cards for about half a minute and then folded them, leaving the other two heads up.
Prydryk:
Chartier:
The board ran out and Chartier eanred the elimination of Prydryk to move up to 290,000 chips. Holz claimed to have folded two queens and if that's true, he could have won the hand and sent Chartier packing.
Iikka Tahkokallio raised from middle position to 15,000 and Dennis Waterman called from the big blind. The two players saw a flop of and Waterman checked. Tahkokallio bet 26,000 as a continuation bet. Waterman raised all in and Tahkokallio quickly folded.
Waterman increased to 270,000 chips and Tahkokallio dropped to 205,000.
Plucky Lithuanian Kristijonas Andrulis took his chances with against another player's pocket nines, but the nines held up and he heads back to Lithuania with a small return on his investment.