Passing The Lead; Behari Out 4th
by Court on 03.21.09, 12:17 am
After the two early eliminations the qulity of the structure kicked in and play slowed down, or at least the bust outs did. The blinds are up to 10k / 20k with a 3k ante but the average stack is just under 2 million meaning the average stack has 100 big blinds. As the chips have moved around during 4 handed play each player has taken their turn at the top spot. Kathy Liebert and Steve Brecher were at the top early on, then Chris Moore worked his way to nearly 3 million chips while Kathy dropped to the short stack but still had well over 1 million chips.
Then Tony Behari (right) was able to win some big pots and take over as the chip leader, but an ill timed play ended up sending a mass of his chips to Liebert making her the largest stack of the tournament so far and leaving Behari in danger of elimination. Tony had raised to 60k and Liebert called from the small blind. On the9
9
5
they both checked and with the 4 turn the fireworks started. Liebert check raised over the top of a 75k bet from Tony to 200k but the check raise was not enough to make Tony a believer. He then moved all in over the top for a huge raise of around 2.3 million which covered Liebert’s remaining 1.7 million. Behari had to feel sick to his stomach with Kathy snap called the rest of her still healthy stack, knowing he was making a move with the KJ that not only wasn’t much, but had little chance to make anything that could beat a hand Kathy could call with there. Her pocket fives for a flopped full house were enough to lock up the hand and earn her the 4 million chip pot, the chip lead and the largest chip lead of the tournament.
After that monster pot the players stacked up like this:
Kathy Liebert - 4 million
Steve Brecher - 2 million
Chris Moore - 1.2 million
Tony Behari - 600k
It wasn’t long though before Behari had the rest of his chips in the middle, and Liebert was the one that showed up with the hand to look him up. Her TT
was good enough to call his all in and put her well ahead of Behari’s K8. The board came out J-7-2-3-4 and Liebert was able to add the rest of Behari’s chips to her stack while reducing the field to only 3 players. Tony Behari’s 4th place finish is worth $230,000.
Chris Moore had his moment in the sun earlier during 4 handed play, but fell off a little as Liebert began to prosper. The short handed, deep-stacked expert is in a great spot to use his experience and experitise to full advantage here in 3-handed play, but his opponents both have experience themselves and are no strangers to being deep in tournaments.
