Better Late Than Never
by Jessica on 06.17.09, 4:12 pm
The field continues to grow in the $5K PLO event and several players have formed a line at the front of the tournament area, including Isaac “westmenloaa” Baron, Scott “gunning4you” Seiver, and David “Devilfish” Ulliot. In the meantime players are being plucked from existing tables and transplanted to newly opened ones. Chris “Genius28″ Lee was relocated within five minutes of sitting down on Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier’s right (pictured right). While Lee was whisked away to play PLO elsewhere, he missed some of Jason’s early action.
First we watched as Mercier and two other checked around on an 8
7
4
board with the blinds at 50/100. The turn was the A
 and the player in the small blind led out for 600. Mercier was in the big blind and thought for a while before raising to 2.8K more. The other player folded and the small blind made the call. The river was the 7. The small blind led out again, this time for 2.5K and Mercier folded.
Later, we observed as Mercier raised to 275 from the cutoff and the player in the big blind called. The flop came AKT and the other player checked to Jason who bet 450. The other player called and both players checked when the K paired the board on the turn. The river was the J and the other player checked once again. Mercier bet out 1.25K and his opponent quickly called. We didn’t see all four of his cards, but Jason did turn his JJ face up to show his jacks full. His opponent tabled KJ for kings full of jacks to take down the pot.  Despite taking these early hits, Jason is still sitting at close to 10K in chips, with one rebuy chip left as well.
Mercier appears to have taken two of his 5K chip allotments straight away while others, like Stewart “Stuman123″ Yancik, Jeff “yellowsub” Williams, and the aforementioned Lee only took 5K up front and are holding on to their other two. Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson and his tablemate Jamie “thecronic420″ Rosen took the full 15K from the get go, as did many other players at their table. Rosen explained to us that he would’ve considered saving one of the chips, but since everyone had already put so many chips on the table, he decided the best strategic move was to take it all up front.
While players continue to find their seats in the $5K event, the restarts of Events #32 and #33, the $2K NLHE and $10K LHE are about to get underway.
