FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#250D – London Journal #16D – Million Dollar Cash Game #18 – The Action Begins ….

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It’s 3 PM and, after a couple hours of generally conservative action, the betting is starting to accelerate. As I mentioned yesterday, the big pots in this game are generally not dick-out raising wars before the flop. For the shorter stacks, that can happen, but the biggest pots generally have started slowly and built to a point where a raise or reraise after THE TURN gets someone with a deeper stack all-in.

Because few hands got that deep today, they played a lot more hands early. At the 2:40 PM break, they played about 60 hands. This is in about 2 hours. Yesterday, they played 124 hands (give or take a couple) for the entire day. But no one is complimenting the faster pace because that slow pace yesterday was accompanied by a few titanic confrontations.

Just before the break, Andy Bloch and Patrik Antonius went all the way to the river on a hand where Andy made three of a kind – K-8 with two kings on the board – but lost. Such is the set-up here that I couldn’t find out what Patrik won with. Ironically, it was because I left the stage, where my vantage point is bad but I can duck behind a pillar and see things. I was actually in the production room where I could see all the hole cards, chip counts, and everything on the board. But I was getting a tour and couldn’t make out on the many small screens – nor could I write down – the exact cards.

But it was a tough one for Andy.

At the 2:40 PM break, these were the chip counts:

1. Tony G $412,000
2. Howard Lederer $86,000
3. Allen Cunningham $107,000 (largely on the strength of the hand where, as I described earlier, he made a stand and induced a fold)
4. Andy Bloch $44,000
5. Chris Ferguson $88,000 (he has been bet out of several of his raises today)
6. Phil Ivery $222,000 (strangely quiet)
7. Patrik Antonius (quietly accumulating chips)
8. Brian Townsend $168,000

Coming out of the break, the players increasingly tried pushing each other around. In one hand at about 3 PM, Patrik Antonius raised under the gun. Chris Ferguson reraised to $14,000 from the small blind; Patrik called.

6c-6d-3d-Jc

Chris checked the turn and Patrik seized the opportunity by betting $17,000. Ferguson thought for awhile before pushing all-in. Antonius folded pretty quickly. Chris won about $35,000 on the hand and a compliment from Tony G: “That’s when you look the best, Jesus. You look great pushing your chips in.”

A few hands later, Phil Ivey raised to $2,000, Patrik called, Tony G called, and then Howard reraised to $13,000 on the button. They all folded.

These groups of hands could be coincidences, but as I write this at 3:15 PM, I think the action is going to pick up. The two questions on my mind are (1) For how long with Brian Townsend keep out of the fray? and (2) When are we going to see a giant hand with Phil Ivey?

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