Aakkari and Atimos… Adios
by Court on 09.30.09, 12:41 pm
After a slow start the pace has picked up and another handful of players have been sent to the payout cage. The field has dropped to only 21 players remaining after the most recent elimination of Liz Lieu in 22nd place. Before Lieu was sent to the rail five other players had been eliminated since the redraw.
Within minutes of play starting back up Andre “Aakkari” Akkari (right) was all in with his pocket jacks against the AK of Eric “P3achy_keen” Liu. The coinflip turned into a smashing as the flop brought two aces and the turn put a king out leaving Akkari drawing dead and on his way to collect the £25,918 for his 27th place finish. Everyone finishing 19th to 27th gets the same payout, worth about $41,00 once conversted to US dollars.
After Akkari was sent packing Daniel Negreanu was able to sideline Men Nguyen who had doubled through Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier twice just before the break. Men had made two pair with his T9 but Daniel’s pocket tens had made a set leaving Nguyen no chance at the pot when the chips went in on the turn. Nguyen was officially the 26th place finisher.
Former tournament chip leader Yevgeniy “Atimos” Timoshenko (left) was the next to go. After an opening raise to 22k Thomas Bichon made it 75k. Yevgeniy then jumped into the action going all in for a total of 174k. The initial raiser surrendered his hand and Bichon thought before calling with his 6
6
. Timoshenko held the AK and after no help on the board he became the 25th place finisher. For many a 25th place finish would be an accomplishment, but the way Timoshenko has been racking up major wins lately anything other than a 1st place finish has to feel a bit out of place to him.
An ever active Mercier put the finishing touches on the Peter Gould elimination. Gould had lost a large pot to Steven Fung that left him in dire shape and the last of his chips went in with KJ angainst Mercier’s A4. The naked ace held up again for Mercier and for the second time in the last couple of hours Mercier was able to take ace rag up against two in between cards to eliminate a player from the tournament. Gould hit the rails in 24th place.
After tangling with Doyle Brunson twice in short order Arnaud Mattern found himself the 23rd place finisher. In the first hand Arnaud had Brunson all in but Doyle’s pocket kings held against the AQ of Mattern to double Dolly and leave Mattern with less than 100k. In a subsequent hand Doyle raised to 25k, Barry Shulman called and Mattern moved all in. Brunson quickly called and Shulman got out of the way, leaving Doyle and his pocket eights up against the kings that Mattern held this go around. An eight on the river drew a sucking in of breath from the crowd but Mattern graciuosly made his exit from the table.
Here is a look at some of the players that are still in with rough chip counts for the ones we can get to, including two November Niners in Saout and Akenhead. The blinds are headed to 6k / 12k with a 2k ante after a short break. Average stack is right around the 500k chip mark.
Still In With 21 Left:
Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier - 850k
Daniel Negreanu - 650k
Eric “P3achy_keen” Liu - 500k
Matt Hawrilenko - 500k
Ram Vaswani - 500k
Doyle Brunson - 420k
Steven Fung - 400k
James Akenhead - 300k
Antoine Saout - 200k
