Four Years to Find Fold

Some days as a tournament reporter can be frustrating as so much time is wasted waiting for players to make decisions. I'm not mentioning any countries by name but nationalities are famed for taking an age.

Two Italian players were involved in a large pot, all pre-flop, where everyone around knew a fold was coming but the theatrics had to be played out like we were watching an old Italian Opera. Just like an Opera, I had no idea what was being said.

Piero Schiavulli opened to 10,500 before Stefano Demontis three-bet to 25,000 from the button. Schiavulli came back with a four-bet to 43,500 but Demontis wasn't finished and shoved for 200,500.

It took the dealer several minutes to count this amount as Demontis' stack was awkwardly stacked. Schiavulli had this time to think and then took several more minutes to make a decision. His table mates were getting frustrated and the TD picked up on this and put the clock on Schiavulli. This prompted him to open fold {a-Hearts} {j-Hearts} and he was shown {k-Clubs} {10-Clubs} by his fellow countryman.