All’s Fair in Love and Poker
by Jessica on 07.12.09, 8:58 pm
As Ryan “toetagu” Fair’s (pictured right) fate was being dealt, all he could say was that his play, “took a lot of heart.” He is right about that. With the blinds at 6K/12K ante 2K a player in the hijack raised, Fair called from the button, and the player in the big blind put in a 3-bet. The initial raiser folded and Ryan moved all-in for 432K on top of the big blind’s raise. Fair’s opponent thought for a while and got an exact count before calling with A
K, which had Ryan’s A
T
in bad shape.
“I thought he could be doing it light,” Fair explained to his table in an attempt to explain his play.
The J8
4 flop didn’t help Fair much, but the 8 on the turn left him with more outs to a chop. He got just that with the J on the river double pairing the board. He and the other player chopped the pot and Ryan now has 650K.
“All it takes is heart,” Fair told the table as he sat back down to continue playing the remainder of the level.
Jaroslaw “YanniYankievich” Jaskiewicz also got it all-in for his tournament life with an inferior ace to his opponent. We missed the preflop action, but Jaskiewicz appeared to raise from the button and, through a series of reraises, got it all-in against one of the players in the blinds holding AJ to his opponent’s AK. The 852 flop left Jaroslaw drawing pretty slim, but the 3 on the turn gave him a wheel draw to chop the pot. The river came J, pairing Jaskiewicz’s jack with one of the two non-club jacks left in the deck to double him up to 800K and leave his opponent with just five big blinds. The other player was so shocked at his misfortune that he refused to count his chips and made the tournament staff count his stack down while he recalled what just happened to other players nearby.
Owen “ocrowe” Crowe’s (pictured left) once massive stack was demolished midway through Level 20. With over a million chips already in the pot, his opponent moved all in for 748K on a board of A8546. Crowe decided to call, leaving around 170K left in his stack, and instantly tossed his cards into the muck when he got a look at the other player’s T9 for a flopped flush.
Crowe then doubled back up to 340K later in the level when his AJ outflipped an opponent’s pocket sixes after all of the chips went in preflop.
Joe “jcada99″ Cada took a slight hit to his chip stack when he opened for a raise to 31K in middle position and it folded around to the player in th ebig blind who moved all-in for 150K more.
“Wow this is very close,” Cada said. “It is such a borderline hand.” In the end, Joe decided he needed to call with AJ, which was trailing the other player’s QQ. The board ran out 95422 and the other player doubled up while Cada dropped to 1.45 million.
