There are at least enough Team Betfair shirts in the room to fill their own table. It's sometimes tough to figure out who's who, when your descriptive 'player notes' say, "Brown hair, grey Betfair shirt, sunglasses." But one of these, Shawn Needham, just doubled up. If you just take their cards and the fact that they got it all in preflop, it's not that exciting - Needham held against . But there was lots of held breath -
Flop:
Turn:
River: Flush and much needed double through for Needham.
Elsewhere short stack Nick Goodall got rid of Max Pescatori on a board of by pushing all in here... Max passed and another shortie victory. Compared to yesterday's early carnage today at the Sportsman has been pretty sedate.
"I tell you now," announces Frenchman Philipe Rouas, "I've got you beat," as he pushes all-in.
The flop was reading and Philipe had re-raised Bryn Kenney's initial 4,125 stab at the pot.
There was a bit of a kerfuffle as the dealer mixed up some of the chips, but by the time had made his move and made comments such as "You shouldn't call, you're way behind" and "You have Jacks, right?", it was clear to Kenney that he had a decision for his tournament life.
Eventually Kenney opted for the fold, and as he'd promised, Philipe revealed for the flopped straight.
At this point, Howard Lederer commented, "Just for future reference, you can't say what your hand is."
Whether or not he actually said what his hole cards were or not, I'm unsure, but in response, Philipe replied, "I respect what you say, so that's okay with me."
THE FIFTY-- It's good being Patrik Antonius. Model looks, hefty bankroll, and those draws always seem to come in at the right time.
On a flop of , Antonius moved all in for about 9,000 with and got a call from Nikolay Evdakov, who held . No emotion crossed Antonius' face as the fell on the turn and then the on the river, making him the winning flush.