Barry Greenstein sits at a table absent-mindedly fiddling with his remaining chips. There aren’t many of them, little more than 100,000 but in many ways he should be thankful to have any at all.
Just moments before Greenstein had got it in with J♣ 10♣ , against the J♥ J♦ of Kyle Julius and A♥ Q♥ of Corey Burbick leaving ‘The Bear’ just a 16.7% chance of survival. That’s approximately the odds of rolling a one on a six-sided die. Snake eye, the board chopped an eight-high straight.
Still short that left the Team PokerStars Pro with a few thousand more with which to find a good spot to get his stack into the middle. None were coming, largely thanks to the aggression of Julius and Anthony Gregg.
While Greenstein unsuccessfully searched for an opening, Julius opened to 32,000 and Burbick three-bet to 83,000 from the hijack. Gregg, in the small blind, came over the top for a cold-bet of 144,000. Both players folded, Julius leaving the table for a few moments after doing so.
“Show one,” implored Ruben Visser.
Gregg, face still showing no emotion, declined and started sliding his cards towards the muck.
“There’s cameras,” said Visser.
Gregg’s hand stopped its journey to the muck. He turned his hand onto its back revealing a pitiful 8♦ 10♥ . Julius arrived back at the table moments later and looked somewhat unhappy to have been bluffed.
“You had two outs,” he said, eyeballing Gregg, before adding what sounded like “Come at me.”
It was enough to make Visser laugh, apparently finding the testosterone swings amusing even in these late stages.
Greenstein has seen it all before, he continued to sit cross-legged at the table, his smartphone never that far away from his hand. Calmly he let his stack slide down to 73,000 but a wounded bear is still a dangerous one. Burbick shoved from the small blind and Greenstein made the call from the big with jack-high.
Greenstein: J♥ 8â™
Burbick: 7♦ 6â™
That doubled the Bear up to 150,000 then again to 330,000 shortly after with Qâ™ 10â™ over the Aâ™ 3â™ of Sam Greenwood. Greenstein, who has played the highest stakes and would fight a horse-sized duck, is not going to feel the pressure like many of the players remaining in the field. Wounds licked, Greenstein heads into the break with a playable 20 big blind stack and 32 players remaining.
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