Batista a Lil’ Unlucky
by Brett on 05.29.09, 10:45 pm
Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista was eliminated on the final hand before the dinner break of the $40,000 No Limit Hold ‘em event. The action was raised preflop, and on a board of J
3
2 Batista check-raised Greg “fossilman” Raymer to 175K. Raymer tanked for quite a while before asking for a chip count. Batista pushed the remainder of his stack out to be counted, and it was over 100K. Raymer then pushed Batista all-in, and Batista snap-called, tabling K7. Raymer showed 88
for a pair of eights. The turn was red paint, but it was the Q. The river blanked as well when the J fell, eliminating Batista from the tournament. Raymer told us that Batista had about 300K before the hand, and the Main Event champ now sports a stack over 1.3 million chips.
Just as players came back from break, James “mig.com” Mackey was also taken down by Raymer as Mackey’s 205K stack went in preflop with KQ
. Unfortately for him, Raymer had him in trouble with the AK, and the K-2-2-T-7 board sent Mackey out of the tournament in 44th place.
With 42 players remaining and the average stack at 574K, here’s a look at the up-to-date chip counts:
Justin Bonomo - 1.35M (tournament chip leader)
Lex “Raszi” Veldhuis - 1.3M
Brian “tsarrast” Rast - 730K
David “Bakes” Baker - 590K
Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi - 380K
Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson - 305K
The $1500 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better is on a 90-minute dinner break and will resume play at 8:42 PST. Chris “SKOAL” Falconer, who final tabled this very same event at last year’s WSOP, has one of the larger stacks we saw as players went on break. He sits at 17.8K, more than double the average.
Eric “jakz101″ Crain (picturedat right) has had a rough go of it in the Omaha H/L event. When we saw him earlier this morning he proclaimed he was playing terribly after the second hand of play. We checked in on him again before dinner break and he was down to around 1,200 chips with the betting limits at 300/600. He told us to stick around for a hand and raised from the button after another player limped in early position. Both the big blind and the limper called Eric’s raise and the flop came Q53. It checked to Crain who quickly bet and both players called. The other two players checked to Crain again after the 6 came on the turn and he paused momentarily before checking as well. The T on the river prompted the big blind to bet out, the limep folded, and Crain flashed us the A and A before reluctantly folding, leaving himself 550 chips.
“I didn’t have any low at all,” he explained after the hand.
The very next hand a player raised from middle position, another player called, and Eric cheerfully tossed in his last 550. He let us sweat the hand with us and showed his cards: AAQ3. The flop came down K54 and Crain was very happy to see the 2 peel off on the turn. The river was the 6 and one of the other players turned up his hand to show J9 for a flush. The initial, who held A-2 seemed a little perturbed when Crain barked out “Wheel!” and flipped up his hand.
“Nice turn,” the man said.
Crain paused momentarily, pushed the two aces in his forward and jokingly said, “Sorry buddy, I don’t have a ton of sympathy for you.” Even though he only took half the pot, crain essentially tripled up on the hand, he was still extremely short stacked and we’re not positive that he survived long enough to make the dinner break.
