THE FIFTY-- Bad news for all you budding Heather Wells fans -- her once-formidable stack is now down to a mere 3,700.
Though she'd been dwindling slowly all afternoon after a terrific start, the latest blow to Wells came courtesy of the man in the zebra-print sweater, whom I will now reveal as Stephen Pearce.
On a board of , Pearce moved all in for 5,500 on the turn. As the cameras swarmed, he began chatting to their lenses.
"I'm not nervous at all. Especially because she hasn't called yet."
Wells did call, and tabled , while our zebra-printed friend turned up the , leaving Wells drawing to only two outs. The river was the and Pearce's stack shot up to 24,500.
"It's all about these moments, isn't it?" he said as he stacked up his chips. Wells remained silent and emotionless as she counted out what she had left.
No not bad beats, just the room in general. Here in the Sportsman several players have been complaining how chilly it is. Annie Duke has several layers on and a hood pulled tight into her face like Kenny from South Park.
What does Jeff Lisandro flop when holding against aces?
How about ?
The money proceeded slowly into the pot, but finally all got in after a turn, and a river.
Wei Ma had stuck himself to the pot with earlier calls, and threw his last few thousand in on the river after Lisandro put him all in. Ma showed , and gets the rest of the night off.
We ran into Erick Lindgren before start time today and he had literally just got off the plane. His good friend Bill Edler had just won the WPT event at Biloxi, and Erick had to leave when it was three-handed, so I informed him that Bill had won (to which a flurry of high-fiving commenced) and then showed Erick where to try to get his day changed to Day Two. While the process was getting taken care of, Erick made a snap decision that he would play today after all, and is in the field today with just above his starting chips.
We grabbed him on first break to chat about all of that stuff.
Online whiz-kid Tom "Durr" Dwan has seen his stack go south after running aces into kings.
The lucky chappy was British amateur Ian Munns, his final all-in being called instantly by Durr, whose excitement soon turned to despair when he spotted his opponent's hand.
An unproductive later and Munns was a rich man, scooping up a 50k pot and leaving his American opponent with a depleted stack of 27k.
We got the chance to chat with Phil Hellmuth on first break from his Day One of the Main Event. Phil told us about his day yesterday, in which he did some of the typical touristy things around town.
THE SPORTSMAN -- Francisco Lopez may have overtaken his neighbour Dario Minieri in chips, but the super-aggressive young Italian is still merrily raising almost every hand preflop. It backfired a minute ago when Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott limped in early position, along with Richard Collier, and when Minieri made it 1,600 to go, he faced Dave moving in for a further 7,600. It actually took longer for Collier to pass than Minieri, but there he was, raising the next hand, undaunted but with a much-reduced stack (13,600).
The rest of that table looks like:
Terry Cook -- 39,200
Humberto Brenes -- 34,000
Jonas Eriksen -- 17,250
Richard Collier -- 25,200
Cristiano Blanco -- 18,650
Devilfish -- 10,825
Passing through the floor, Dean Sanders asked me what the average stack was. In my experience, it's only people who are ahead of it who ever ask this question, to see by how much. Well, the average here at the Sportsman is now 28K, and Sanders is in comfortable shape with 48,600.