Thursday, 28th March 2024 22:05
Home / Uncategorized / EPT12 Malta: Comfort, nuts and nails. Three players on the bubble

You’ll have noticed that it was a long bubble, somehow made longer by the almost ninja like dexterity of at least one player who managed to nurse a stack of less than a blind, and steer it into the money.

Not everyone approaches the bubble in the same way. But you can get an idea of how they’re dealing with the situation by looking at them.


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There was the chip leader Jaroslaw Sikora, whose stack stretched east to west. The game is coming easy to him right now, and his passage through the bubble would be an easy one, helped along by a massage therapist. He would break through standing proud, like Washington crossing the Delaware, as those around him stressed and strained; and all while having his temples rubbed with baby cream.

Sikora made it into the money.

Then there is Ivan Luca. Charismatic, talented, and seemingly aloof, he plays an average stack like it’s the most powerful object in the world, kryptonite against so many would be Supermen.

ivan_luca_ept12malta_28oct15.jpgIvan Luca
Before he was moved to the feature table, he was positioned alongside Jeff Rossiter and Christophe Vogelsang, and opposite Alexander Ivarsson. All the while he ate almonds, and drank homemade tea through a metal straw from what looked like a tiny ornate cauldron stuffed with the contents of a swamp. This, with the chewing, was somehow menacing. Luca eats nuts like a man who has the nuts.

Luca made it into the money.

Lastly there was Ludovic Geilich.

As play went hand for hand the Scot had about 40,000 chips, surely enough, and stared at the tournament clock as if willing the number of players to drop by mental force alone.

ludovic_geilich_ept12malta_28oct15.jpgLudovic Geilich (left)
Geilich is by nature quiet at the table. There may well be a voice in his head screaming and cursing, but we don’t hear it. Instead he took any frustration out on his finger nails. But that’s not a bubble thing. At least I don’t think it is. For one thing he’s too good a player to spend much time worrying about being a short stack. For another, it looked like he had few nails left to chew.

Like I said, it looked like Geilich would make it. After all, others were in far worse shape than he (read about that shortly on the blog). But somehow Geilich would not make it. Somehow the aces he found would be a curse, not a blessing. Somehow he would depart in 97th place. No money. No nails.

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Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

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