Fast and Furious: 18 Left in Festa al Lago
by Court on 10.24.09, 8:59 pm
After getting into the money the next hour and a half of action saw plenty of all ins and plenty of bustouts. By the end of the 18th level of play, and third level for today, only 18 players were left in the Festa al Lago WPT tournament. Play for today will continue for two more levels or down to 10 players, whichever comes first. Tomorrow the action will go until a final table of six players is reached, and those six will then return on Monday to play it out for the title on the WPT TV set.
The list of players finishing in the bottom level of the payouts included some of the biggest names in poker. Everyone from 27th all the way to 19th earned the $23,855 prize and while the bustouts have been one after the other Jason “StatusUp” Lavallee has been raking in chips at an impressive rate. His 3.6 million stack at the break is about 2 million more than the next largest stack of 1.6 million that Kido Pham sits behind.
Markus “LURPED” Gonsalves (right) was the first to go, finishing in 27th place. He was the short stack going into the final 27 but got his chips in good in a 3-way all in preflop that could have put him right back in contention. Gonsalves had pocket kings and moved all in for 167k. Mark Seif called and then Larry Berg moved all in over the top for another 150k. Seif called that two and the card were put on their backs. Gonsalves had the best of it with KK, having Berg’s QQ notched while Seif went into the battle with a naked ace. When all was said and done the best hand going in was the third best hand. A nothing flop left Gonsalves in the lead but a queen on the turn put Berg in the catbird seat. An ace on the river had no impact on outcome of the hand but paired Seif’s A9. The near triple up put Berg around the 800k mark, took a chunk from Seif’s stack and sent Gonsalves to the sidelines. Seif was later eliminated in 24th place. He had flopped top pair but Berg made a set of sixes on the turn and was able to eliminate Seif.
After Gonsalves was gone it turned into the Jason Lavallee show. He was able to eliminate Prahlad Friedman in 26th place when his jacks held up against the A
K of Friedman. Lavallee called a raise from Prahlad preflop and then on the T
77 Friedman check raised all in for around 340k after Lavallee bet 59k. Jason made the call with his pair and Prahlad did not improve on the turn or river.
The 25th spot went to Chris Ferguson when his AQ ran into the aces of Jonas Entin. Entin would later fall to Kido Pham when Kido flopped a set of sevens on a K-Q-7 board and Entin couldn’t get away from his AQ. Jonas had lost a lot of chips prior to the hand and after leading at the flop for 100k he only had around 200k left behind after Pham moved in. Entin ended up being the 20th place finisher.
Chad “M8kingmoves” Batista (left) got lucky a few times to survive in the tournament, but in a turn of fate it was when he was all in with the best hand that he was eliminated. Chad was all in with AK against the AJ of Corwin Cole and a jack on the board gave Cole the hand and built his stack to around 900k which in turn ended up getting sent over to Lavallee. Cole was on his way to a massive double up with his aces all in preflop against the pocket jacks of Lavallee but a jack hit the board again and instead of doubling up to nearly 2 million Corwin Cole found himself eliminated in 21st place.
As the level neared and end Lavallee was able to bring the field down to the final 2 tables and 18 players when he eliminated Terry Ryan in 19th place. On a K
J54 flop Jason called a 100k chip bet from Ryan and with the 6 river Ryan moved all in only be be instantly called by Lavallee who rolled over his QT as he said “I call.” After raking in Ryan’s chips the stack in front of Lavallee looked to be around the 3.6 million mark.
Lee Markholt was also eliminated during the level, finishing in 22nd place.
The players were sent on the scheduled 15 minute break and returned to do a quick redraw for new seats at the final two tables and will then begin the 10k / 20k 2k ante blind level.
