Big Hands, Big Pots
2007-04-23 15:26:34
By: Gene Bromberg
We had 979 players in last night's $200,000 Sunday Guaranteed Tournament, continuing the upward trend in the size of our fields. When you spend six hours fighting your way through that many players, you pray that all that hard work isn't spoiled by one sick hand. For a few of our final table participants, that wasn't to be.
Down to eight players UGOTPZD got all his chips in with KK against pbdrunks's AK. When you're all in with Kings you want a call...and you hope to heck the other guy doesn't hold an Ace. Because it seems like every bleeping time there's an ace on the flop. As, unfortunately for UGOTPZD, there was this time.
A bit later another big hand went down in flames. Holding the chip lead, Sowerss made an unusual 10BB preflop raise and was called both by kikiriki and Brett "gank" Jungblut. When the cards were flipped over we saw why Sowerss might've made such a suspicious raise, as he held a strong but certainly vulnerable pair of tens. But kikiriki had him crushed with pocket Queens and gank held an overcard to them both with Ks-5s. The flop came 9d-7h-4d, a fairly good flop for kikiriki, but the eight of hearts on the turn wasn't so friendly, as it now gave Sowerss an open-ended straight draw. And, of course, a six fell on the river to give Sowerss the straight and the hand.
Thanks in part to those big poker hands Sowerss and pbdrunks found themselves heads-up at the end. Sowerss had more than a 3-1 chip lead, but after pbdrunks managed to chip up a small bit he fell victim to the hand that cracked UGOTPZD's Kings. He raised with Ah-Kh and was called, but this time the flop of 7h-7c-5c missed him. Still, with the board paired it was likely the flop also missed Sowerss so he made a $90K bet, only to have Sowerss come over the top for all his chips. If he won the pot he'd hold the chip lead, and after thinking it through pbdrunks made the call. Sowerss turned over the Qc-Jc for the flush draw, but it was the Jack on the turn that gave Sowerss the lead. The six on the river helped neither player and it gave Sowerss the victory and the $45,000 first prize. pbdrunks took home $26,500 as our runner-up.
;)
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