Crisis Averted, Tournament Begins, Bustouts Ensue
by Jessica on 06.21.09, 4:36 pm
Alright, here’s the lowdown on the $5K NLHE Shootout. We’ve got 275 players as Level One winds down and the event is getting capped at 300 players. Each of the tables in Round One are playing 9 or 10-handed and anyone who beats their table today will make the money. The second round will consist of five 6-handed tables and, unless Tournament Director Jack Effell misspoke, we are going to have a five-handed final table. Interesting, no?
What’s also interesting is the way some of these table draws are shaping up. Good friends Scott “gunning4you” Seiver and Isaac Haxton are seated side by side and, judging from their boisterous laughter, they appear to be enjoying the situation just fine.
Friends and Vegas roommates Eric “EFro” Froehlich and Brock “t_soprano” Parker (pictured right) drew what may be our P5s Feature table of the day. In addition to those two, Aaron Been and Steve “zugwat” Silverman are also at the table, as are Marco Traniello and Mark Seif.
The table got a little roomier early on when Traniello opened for a raise at the 100/200 blind level , another player called, and Parker reraised out of the small blind. Traniello called and the other player folded. Parker led for 2.7K on the 10-3-2 flop and Marco called. The turn was an ace and Parker checked to Traniello, who moved all-in for 9.5K or so. We missed the hand, but Froehlich told us that Brock thought for a while before calling with pocket kings, which were behind Marco’s A-K. The case king failed to fall on the river and Parker was eliminated. Joining him on the rail is Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier, who appeared to last only fifteen minutes or so before busting out.
While some players were busting, others were busy busting players. We caught Amit “amak316″ Makhija (pictured left) in a hand that had checked around on the A
T
5
flop. When the 4 fell on the turn the player in the big blind bet 1.1K into a pot of around 1.6K and Makhija called from the cutoff. The river was the 2 and the other player led for 1.5K. Amit raised to 4,050 total and the other player quickly moved all-in. Makhija waited a minute to get a count, appeared to be mulling over a tough decision, and then said, “Alright, I call,” as he flipped up A3 for the wheel. His opponent showed a set of tens and politely pushed his chips Makhija’s way as he got up to leave. makhija is now up to 26K from his 15K starting stack.
After the hand, Amit’s tablemates couldn’t resist giving him a hard time about his apparent slowroll.
“Nice way to start off the day slowrolling someone,” said Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little.
“It wasn’t that bad, was it?” Amit asked. “I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing the nuts and that something like 6-7 didn’t get there.”
Another player then chimed in, saying it sure looked like Amit was considering folding and even Kathy Liebert decided to give him a hard time about sucking out on the river. It appeared to be all in good fun though, as these shootouts often are in the early stages of the tournament.
Chad “lilholdem954″ Batista pulled us aside to regale us with how he sucked out on a player to double up early. The player had thrown out a 500 chip and clearly intended to raise, but failed to verbally declare he was doing so. The chip stood as a call. Chad was in the big blind and checked his option with 6-9. The flop came J-9-6 and the two players proceeded to get it all-in with the other player holding pocket aces. Batista’s two pair held and he doubled up to just over 30K, while the other player is currently on life support.
