The dinner break in Sanremo is among the more generous of any of the EPT stops. Not only is a lavish buffet provided, with wine, but it lasts for 95 minutes, offering plenty of time to try all nine courses and finish with a bowl of ice cream, else head back to the hotel, freshen up, maybe take a nap.
Thing is, some players are just never satisfied. Sam Razavi, for instance, prefers the less commonly seen 14-hour, 10-minute dinner break, and he will stop at nothing until he gets it.
At least that was the case yesterday, when Razavi thought he would steal a march on the rest of the field by heading out to dinner ten minutes before the official start time of the break. He went back to his hotel, took a shower, then lay down on his bed for forty winks. Next thing he knew it was 9.30am on Sunday, tournament day two.
Razavi had slept through all of the dinner break, then levels six, seven and eight, then through the night, and was left sending desperate tweets to @PokerStarsBlog to find out if he was still in.
“Could you let me know if I have any chips worth coming back to please?” Razavi wrote. “Fell asleep at the dinner break last night LOL :0-“
Turns out, Razavi did still have a workable stack this morning. Having left about 55,000 before his extended dinner/sleep break, he returned to find 40,100, and some very envious fellow poker players.
“Well rested AND more chips,” said Kara Scott, who is sitting to Razavi’s left today, nursing a short stack. Scott had earlier tweeted: “Bleurgh – exhausted after too little sleep. I may have to wear dark glasses today to play poker. Don’t judge me.”
Those dark glasses will be best employed today to shield Scott’s eyes from the Razavi smile. Always one of the most exuberant presences at the table (he has been known to moonwalk, Michael Jackson-style after winning pots), a well-rested Razavi is a wise-cracking force to be reckoned with.
“Be careful over here, there are more tanks than the Soviet Union,” he offered, while watching another hand play out, in a fashion best described as “deliberate”. “There were a lot of tanks on my table yesterday too. I thought I might come back to find more chips than I left.”
In truth, it is hardly surprising that Razavi is a little tired. “I’ve been literally around the world in the past four weeks,” he said, before detailing an itinerary that would make even the most optimistic environmentalists abandon all hope for the ozone layer.
“I went from England to Mauritius, then back to Paris, then Melbourne, Macau, then Thailand. Then the Philippines for the APT event out there, then Japan for a bit, then Panama for the LAPT and then here.”
The way he quickly rattled through the destinations made it sound as if nothing interesting actually even happened on these trips. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Razavi made a final table in Macau in July (finishing ninth), two more final tables in Mauritius (finishing first and third), another final table in Manila (sixth in a PLO event) and then yet another in Panama (seventh in the LAPT main event).
But the crowning glory came in Melbourne, where Razavi took down the Grand Final of the ANZPT, a $339,745 score, which is the largest of his career. He is not only on a tear around the continents, but at the tables too.
Really, the only person who can beat him these days is the Sandman, but Razavi is doing his best to brush the sleeping dust away from his eyes. “Came back 2 the room to sort some stuff out, and suddenly the spirit of the duvet is luring me again,” Razavi tweeted moments ago. “RESISTT! RE – zzzzzzzzzzz :0)”
Keep an eye on the live tournament reporting from EPT Sanremo for all the news from the tournament floor.
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