After all the early action, it seemed like today was going to be a short day for seven of the eight final table players. The eliminations of Sebastian Miranda, Alejandro Chokakis and Sergio Braga injected lots of life into the early stages of play.
Then came the next two hours, where the pots were small. Team PokerStars Pro Jose Barbero mixed it up in many spots. BSOP Player of the Year Leonardo Martins was only slightly less active. The other three players – Jaime Zamanillo Mayol, Pablo Tavitian and Fernando Gordo – seemed more wary of entering pots. Gordo played the most. He was the one who put Barbero to the test.
In a battle of the blinds, Gordo checked a queen-high flop, Q♣ 7♦ J♥ . Barbero bet 185,000, a pretty standard-sized continuation bet from the Argentine. Gordo almost beat Barbero into the pot with his call. On the turn 9♠, Gordo checked again. Barbero bet 400,000. Then came the test.
“All in,” said Gordo. He pushed 2,065,000 into the pot, a raise back to Barbero of 1,665,000. Barbero had been having his way with the table. This was the first time that he had faced a tough decision for what amounted to about three-quarters of his own chips.
As he often does when he has a tough decision, Barbero started talking to himself. He stood up. He stretched his arms over his head and talked some more.
“He’s going to talk himself into a call like he did yesterday,” I told fellow PokerStars blog Sergio Prado. And indeed that’s exactly what happened. Barbero talked to himself a minute longer, then called with Aâ™ Qâ™ , top pair of queens. Gordo showed a very surprising J♣ 10♥ , a pair of jacks and a straight draw.
Gordo’s tournament ended with the river A♣ , a card that elicited clapping and shouting from Barbero, a burst of emotion from an otherwise unflappable man. By the time he stacked up all of Gordo’s chips and added them to his own, his count had climbed to about 5.25 million.
“Good for Nacho, bad for the other three,” said Prado.
We’d barely sat down to begin writing the story of Gordo’s exit when the four players at the table all stood up a second time. Somehow the chip leader, Jaime Zamanillo Mayol, was all in with 10♣ 7♥ on a 2♦ A♦ 10♥ board against the Brazilian sensation, Leonardo Martins, who tabled A♣ 7♦ . The board blanked out, sending Mayol crashing out of the tournament.
He seemed pretty happy, all things considered. He qualified for this event on PokerStars for $10 — and never executed a rebuy. As a result he has $57,620 that he didn’t have before.
Dave Behr is a freelance contributor to the PokerStars Blog.
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