Heating Up
by Court on 09.29.08, 7:20 pm
“It’s like a party in here,” an animated Daniel Negreanu said after he was moved to table three in the dungeon area and after pausing for a moment he followed up with “a really hot party.” There are six tables in the room, all with lighting for TV overhead. Between the high power lights putting off heat and the crowded room being slam full of players, dealers, media, floormen, TV crews, fans, and massage girls the temperature has been on the rise since the dinner break.
The six tables in the Face to Face room referred to as the dungeon make up 2/3rds of the remaining tables. The other three are out in the main part of the casino. Before being moved into the dungeon area Jeff “ActionJeff” Garza (right) had another player all in with his set of tens in commanding position when all the chips went on the turn. His opponent had only two outs with his pocket queens, but a queen on the river left Jeff to think about what might have been had he collected the 130k chip pot.
Instead, he is having to deal with what is, which is a chip stack below the 85k average, but not critical. He has been moved to the Tim “Tmay420″ West / Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar table that is the shortest table of the tournament in total chips with no huge stacks and plenty of smallish ones, including West who was able to again double up but still only has 16k.
Stephen “Stevie444″ Chidwick and David “Raptor” Benefield have both been eliminated. Chidwick (left) was all in against Andy Black with pocket threes trying to hold up against Black’s AT. The A-T-x flop left Chidwick chasing a set that did not materialize and just before the end of the level Stevie was eliminated.
Scott “emptyseat88″ Fischman, Peter “#1Pen” Neff and Scott “R_A_Y” Montgomery are going strong out in the main area. Neff seems to have settled in around 125k while Montgomery has bounced back from an earlier blow and now is back up to around 60k. A stoic Fischman has over 100k in front of him at the table.
Also getting some attention from the cameras in the dungeon are chip leader Brian “sbrugby” Townsend and Chris “Moorman1″ Moorman. Near the end of the level Moorman was seen raking in a pot, but the crush of people around the table made it impossible to get any details on the hand.
Around 80 players went to break, but the last 2 hour level will send more than a few of them home tonight with no chips to return to tomorrow. Who will falter, who will survive, who will prosper? Two hours left in day 2 to find out.
