There are still several gaps in our Round Two and lonely players sitting by themselves being dealt hands that don't play out. Instead, the rule is that the hand is dealt, then once per minute the absent player's blind, big then small then big etc., is taken. It would take about three hours for them to blind out like this, came a helpful announcement for those still in the restaurants or bathroom.
Sometimes the optimal strategy against a top player is to play big pot poker. The more smaller pots played the greater chance the better player has to negate variance.
This may be the line Talal Shakerchi is taking against Tom Dwan. Dwan raised to 1,000 then called when Shakerchi three-bet to 3,400. The flop came and Shakerchi fired 5,500 into the middle. Dwan folded.
Perhaps the most interesting match going on upstairs (the Poker Room and the back room have now been got rid of, but we're still spread over two floors here) is that between Ram Vaswani and Phil Hellmuth. Somewhat predictably for the first few minutes of the first blind level, they're still on 60,000 apiece. Ram Vaswani is yawning, and Hellmuth is looking at what we believe is Facebook on his phone. All we caught as he scrolled down the screen was the heading, Friends (5) - but we suspect he has more friends than that, as the rail is already packed around his table. We'll let you know as soon as there's any good action.
Poor Martin Kabrhel. After arriving early for today's tournament, he discovered that he would have to wait until 10pm to play. (Although we accept that getting straight through to Round 2 might not be considered that unlucky in some circles.) So having spent the first four hours of his day at the Empire watching other people play, he sat down at his second-round table on the dot of 10pm, only to discover that he was once more without an opponent.
For a while we thought he was going to spend three hours raising into thin air, but as it turned out he only got to steal eight blinds before his opponent [Removed:283] returned from his rather too lengthy dinner break a minute or two ago. Must have been a really good dinner...
Jani Sointula raised from the button to 1,000 and Faraz Jaka fought back with a reraise from the big blind to 2,800. Sointula then four-bet to 6,300 and Jaka called.
The flop came down and Jaka check-called a bet of 7,200 from Sointula. The turn brought the and both players checked to see the on the river. Both checked again.
Sointula tabled the for just ace-king high and won the pot. He retook the lead and is up to 70,000 while Jaka dropped to 50,000.
Chris Ferguson is the first player out after losing the classic of all classics coin-flip against fellow Full Tilt Pro Andrew Feldman. All the chips went in pre-flop in this 120k show-down:
Feldman:
Ferguson:
The board ran .
Feldman hit a set on the river he didn't need and turned and let out a little yell in delight. Ferguson meanwhile was jokingly telling off his Pro manager for waking him up in time to make the start of his match.
![[user66118]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
and Shakerchi fired 5,500 into the middle. Dwan folded.
and Jaka check-called a bet of 7,200 from Sointula. The turn brought the 
and both players checked to see the 
on the river. Both checked again.
for just ace-king high and won the pot. He retook the lead and is up to 70,000 while Jaka dropped to 50,000.
