DUBLIN BELLYBUSTERS

Sunday, October 4th, 2009: The Full Tilt Espana Series - Barcelona Event, Day 3 (Evening)
The curse of the chip-leader struck again as Julian, the first man over the 1 million chip mark, fell in 6th place just an orbit later. 5-Handed, Joachim and Felipe were the short-stacks. Felipe had recently tripled up with AA versus 44 and 33 but Joachim’s stack was going in the opposite direction. He lost a couple of medium sized pots and then raise/folded A7 from the Hijack after I re-popped him with QQ from the Cut-Off. Two hands later, we went head to head blind versus blind.

Hand 11 - Day 3, Blinds 15000/30000/3000, 850K
Joachim raised to 125K, effectively chopping his 370K stack. I looked down at 88 and put him all-in. I knew he wasn’t folding in this spot so our hands were turned over in a flash. He had AQ and we were racing. An 8 in the window put me in the box-seat as I just had to fade some runner-runner straight and flush outs. The Jack on the turn paired the board, making me a boat and ending the hand. I congratulated Joachim on a fine performance and he graciously wished me luck.

4th place then went to Jun Da Zhan or ‘Jimmy’ as he was affectionately known. Jimmy rode his luck all day, often getting his money in bad but a combination of ballsy and lucky is not a bad thing in poker. On the day, it was enough to earn him €20,000. With almost €200,000 being shared between the top 3 spots, you might have expected 3-handed to be a tense, cagey phase. In actuality, it was a brief affair as my good friend Filipe (the man who doubled me up late on Day 1 with J10 against my pocket queens) and I conspired to lock horns. At the start of this hand, I had 1.4 million chips and Filipe had 800K with the remaining 1.8 million sitting in Cesar Ordonez’s stack.

Hand 12 - Day 3, Blinds 15000/30000/3000, 1.4M
Flipe raised to 80K from the button. I called with K10 and Cesar folded. The flop came K-10-7, I checked and Felipe quickly made it 125K. I insta-min-raised to 250K, he insta-shoved and I insta-called. Felipe had AK and was unlucky to have been out-flopped. As the board ran out with no Ace, I shook hands with Felipe and commiserated with him on getting coolered in the hand. He wished me luck against Cesar.