November Niner Antoine Saout found his tournament life hanging by the thinnest of threads, his overshadowed by Wilf's sevens from heaven, .
The flop looked top banana for Wilf, but the on the turn was a killer card. Wilf simply couldn't hide his disappointent and clenched the air in disgust. The river provided no saviour.
Wilf left with less chips than a bag of Walkers: 65,000.
At this time, Jason Mercier seems to be, in the parlance, pwning this tournament.
As illustration, please witness how he has pwned former chip leader Saar Wilf in the past 10 minutes or so:
Blind on blind in a limp/checked preflop confrontation, Mercier bet out 57,000 on the turn of the board and Wilf called. Come the river, though, Mercier bet 163,000, and this time Wilf folded.
A few hands later and Mercier raised preflop; Wilf called. Mercier proceeded to bet out around 50,000 on the flop, and again Wilf called. They saw a turn and Mercier bet out 107,000, but this time Wilf made it 250,000. "All in," said Mercier. "Excuse me?" said a surprised Wilf. After a few moments' contemplation, Wilf folded.
Wilf - down to 373,000
Mercier - up to 2,046,000. That's over a fifth of the chips in play, and no-one else has over 860,000. Wow.
Jason Mercier - 1,671,000
James Akenhead - 892,000
Praz Bansi - 863,000
Barry Shulman - 805,000
Markus Ristola - 777,000
Saar Wilf - 714,000
Daniel Negreanu - 644,000
Eric Liu - 609,000
Keith Hawkins - 516,000
Matt Hawrilenko - 498,000
Antoine Saout - 387,000
Chris Bjorin - 382,000
Thomas Bichon - 375,000
Teddy Sheringham - 320,000
Tony Cousineau - 250,000
Ram Vaswani - 173,000
Teddy Sheringham raised from late position to 38,000 (may have been 5,000 more), Eric Liu reraised to 100,000 and Sheringham called. On the flop, Sheringham check-folded to a bet of 125,000.
One player who had a Red Bull with his dinner was Antoine Saout. He's been inolved in most of the early pots, mainly three-betting and picking offs pots uncontested. On one hand, however, he raised Saar Wilf's open of 45,000 to 105,000 (he three-bet Jason Mercier just one hand earlier), only for Matt Hawrilenko to move all in from the small blind.
With Wilf quickly folding, Saout waved his finger to one side for a report of Harilenko's stack. The 2009 bracelet winner counted it out himself before confidently announcing 350,000.
Back we come from dinner, and no sooner than our remaining 17 were seated back at the felt, than we saw action.
On Table Centre Court, Daniel Negreanu raised, and the action folded gently over to Doyle Brunson on the button, who moved all in. Over to James Akenhead in the small blind -- who reshoved. Negreanu got out of the line of fire, and they turned their cards over.
Brunson:
Akenhead:
Flop: putting Brunson in the lead
Turn: putting Akenhead back in the lead
Mr. Brunson's assistant, who seemed to be under the impression that Doyle was holding the , cheered and called out for no nine or queen.
River:
To a standing ovation from the crowd, Brunson is bust.
Like Ross and Rachel from Friends, we're now on a break, although a shorter one. This one will be 90 minutes and we'll definitely be getting back together.
Tony Cousineau's like limescale: you just can't get rid of him. So was the case just now as he found himself all in for just over 100,000 with versus James Akenhead's . The board was pretty clinical coming to award Cousineau the pot.