Friday, 29th March 2024 11:44
Home / Uncategorized / ANZPT6 Melbourne Day 3: Dinner plans on hold

Stomachs are grumbling and we’re inching closer to both the dinner break and the elusive ANZPT Melbourne final table. As I start writing this piece, just ten players remain, but by the end of it, I’m hoping we’ll have reached the final nine.

After the eliminations of Day 1a chip leader Anthony Legg (15th), Paul Wilcock (14th) and Peter Skouteris (13th), the story of the last hour came with the elimination of poker veteran Joe Reina.

Both Reina and Huntly had brought a pretty conservative game to this final day, but that soon changed when they collided on an action flop of 5♣ 6♥ 3♥ .

Reina had defended 5♠ 3♠ in the big blind and flopped two pair, but unfortunately for him, Dennis Huntly held 6♠ 6♣ for top set! Both players were deep but there was nothing to stop all the chips flying into the middle in a cooler of a hand. The turn and river bricked and with that, Reina was on the rail and Huntly was our new chip leader.

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Huntly is well-known for his entertaining table talk, but the sharp-tongued Aussie larrikin also has a pretty impressive record on the felt. Huntly’s best result came when he finished ninth at the 2007 Aussie Millions Main Event, but he has a string of cashes since then to his credit. Huntly is ranked 70th in Australia for all-time tournament earnings and 22nd for total number of cashes which is impressive. And now, with over 1.8 million chips, and the tournament chip lead, Huntly is well on the way to add to those numbers here at the ANZPT in Melbourne.

When Robert Damelian lost a coinflip to fall in 11th place, we were on the final table bubble, and just one elimination from the final nine. With the next break approaching Gabriel Messo was at risk, but his pocket tens survived against Luke Spano’s ace-king to see the ten remaining players take things into Level 24.

Edison Nguyen was crippled by Vincent Chua’s pocket aces and we thought we that we were going to see that final nine, but Nguyen fought back, doubling twice, with the worst hand on both occasions, to get back into contention.

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We’ve waited and waited for that pesky final table bubble to burst, but here we are at the end of the article and still ten players remain. It’s a crazy dynamic with the five biggest stacks on one table and the five shortest on the other, yet somehow the FT bubble continues into its second hour. Dinner plans on hold for now…

Heath “TassieDevil” Chick is a Freelance Contributor for the PokerStars Blog.

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