Fee Draws First Blood

The following hand took at least 10 full minutes to play out.

From early position, Jesus Bertoli came in with a raise to 15,000. Action folded all the way around to the small blind, where Ryan Fee was the lone caller.

Heads up, the flop brought {6-Hearts}

. Fee checked over to his opponent, and Bertoli kept the heat on, sliding out a bet of 21,000. Fee thought for a few moments before opting to check-raise to a total of 50,000, which Bertoli wasted little time calling.

Fourth street was the {10-Spades}

, and surprisingly, both men checked.

The last card off was the {3-Diamonds}

. Fee carefully and methodically stacked three towers of blue T5,000 chips, and then, with hands shaking violently, splashed them into the pot. This sent Bertoli deep into the tank. He re-stacked his chips, then counted and re-counted them. After about three minutes, he finally looked up at Fee. "Why you bet so much?" he asked, drawing little response from the usually-talkative Fee.

After a minute, Fee chimed back, "You got ace-king?"

"Is ace-king good?" asked Bertoli, receiving just a subtle shrug in response. Finally, after more than five minutes in the tank, Bertoli took one last look at his cards and slipped them into the muck.

With a beaming smile, Fee slapped his hand face-up on the felt: {5-Hearts}