Werman Busts Mizrachi, Billirakis Going Strong
by Court on 04.20.09, 6:45 pm
With 301 players starting the day the action had to be split between the Fontana Lounge and the main poker room at the Bellagio. As the first couple of levels drop players from the field the tables in the poker room are being broken and players are moving into the Fontana Lounge. In the first two levels almost 50 players have been eliminated.
Louis “MrBeeks” Werman did his part to get the field consolidated into one room, busting Michael Mizrachi in an all in preflop situation. Werman had pocket aces and was up against the AK of Mizrachi. Mike flopped a king but didn’t improve after that and Werman was able to eliminate him from the tournament. In the largest pot of the tournament so far Justin Young was able to bust Amnon Filippi. Both players had straights, but Justin was on the higher end and after adding all of Amnon’s chips to his stack he is up over 500k and easily the chip leader of the tournament at this point.
Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis (right) is doing his best to keep pace though. He recently picked up a massive pot that has to put him among the chip leaders. With the board showing K
Q
57
on the turn Steve bet 31,500 into a pot that already had over 40k in it. The other player called and with the 9
river he again checked to Steve. Billirakis put out a hefty bet of 83,000 and the other player tanked for a full 4 minutes before finally calling, leaving himself with about 40k behind.
As soon as he put the chips in to call Steve turned over his 86 for a rivered straight and the other player mucked his hand. After picking up the roughly 260k chip pot Steve is now well over the 300k mark.
On the other side of things Amit “Amak316″ Makhija and Alec “traheho” Torelli have both been eliminated. Makhija was all in with jacks against the AK of Roy Winston but an ace on the flop ended his tournament run, and Torelli moved all in against Steve Sung on a ten high flop with AK but Steve made a big call with pocket eights that were good enough to win the pot and eliminate Alec.
Earlier in the day Tony “Bond18″ Dunst (left) was eliminated when he tried to make a move on Phil Ivey. From the retelling of the hand it sounded like Dunst had open raised and another player had called. Ivey then raised and Dunst decided there was a good chance Ivey was squeezing so he moved in to pick up the pot. Ivey called with his pocket jacks though, and they held up against the A9 suited of Dunst.
Table 63 hosts 5 PocketFivers with Matt “Mattg1983″ Graham in the 3 seat, Mohsin “ChicagoCards1″ Charania in the 4 seat, Shaun Deeb in the 5 seat, Jimmy “Gobboboy” Fricke in the 7 seat and Jon “pokertrip” Friedberg in the 8 seat. Recently Fricke and Charania mixed it up in pot where Fricke bet the KJT flop and two players called. On the 3 turn Charania bet 15k and after the other player got out of the hand Fricke made the call. On the 2 river the action went check check and Charania showed his Q8 for a flush and said he expected Jimmy to bet the river. Fricke mucked his hand in disgust as he ran into another draw that got there.
