The cat and mouse games of earlier in the day resurfaced again four-handed in the ANZPT Perth Main Event with the table dynamics of two two big stacks and two shorties.
Patrick Mahoney was limping into a lot of pots – not only to avoid the two short stacks shoving on him but also to put his post-flop skills to work. Scott Davies stayed out of the way while short stacks Dean Blatt and Brian McAllister tried desperately to outlast each other.
We did have one rather interesting moment where Davies and Mahoney got to showdown on a raggedy board. Mahoney had raised the flop, but ended up at showdown with just nine-high after the turn and river were checked. It looked like he was going to muck and moved his cards forwards towards the dealer while they were still in his hand. However he quickly turned over his nine-high when Davies could only show eight-high. It appeared that Mahoney was allowed to play his cards as they hadn’t left his grasp, despite the forward motion, which adds another layer of confusion following the controversial ruling earlier in the week against Jim Collopy.
The players moved on and in the end it would be the two short stacks who collided.
Brian McAllister was playing snug, with his only real moment of joy coming with a double up holding pocket queens against Patrick Mahoney’s queen-eight. As the blinds kept circling, McAllister was blinded down to just 170,000, or a little over five big blinds. He moved that in from the small blind with 7♦ 4♣ on the steal attempt but Dean Blatt made a solid call in the big blind with K♥ 6♣ . The board ran out 2â™ 5♣ 9♥ 3â™ J♦ to leave McAllister to collect $37,100 in prize money.
That leaves us with our final three!
Dean Blatt wanted to talk deal numbers but Patrick Mahoney was keen to just play it out. Scott Davies also was happy to play.
“I like to gamble,” chucked Davies. He’s our chip leader with 2.4 million. Patrick Mahoney has just under two million with Dean Blatt on about 650,000.
Heath “TassieDevil” Chick is a Freelance Contributor for the PokerStars Blog.
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