We’re not going to sugar coat this at all. What you’ll read below is a brutal hand that sent three players tumbling out of the tournament and created a new chip leader. Hand of the day. Certainly. Hand of the tournament: quite possibly. Let’s get into it…
With blinds at 15,000/30,000 ante 5,000, the action folded to Ludovic Geilich. The Scotsman, who won this event in 2013, had around 10 big blinds left and he elected to wager them all. The action then reached Jose Luis Calvo. He was also short on chips, with about 500,000 to his name, and he too elected to push his stack over the line.
Ok, so two all-ins from short stacks so far then. Nothing to see here then, just another normal hand of poker. But – and you sensed there was a but coming I’m sure – this would not be the end of the raising and shoving. It was now Fatima Moreira de Melo’s turn to act. The Team PokerStars Pro had about a stack of one million so it was about half her stack to call here, but nothing that would mortally wound her should she get it wrong. Anway she too moved in.
The action then moved round to Fernando Curto, who was in the big blind. He covered everyone and he snap called. Uh oh.
Time to turn over the cards then and this is what was revealed:
Geilich: 7♥ 7♠(17.71% to win)
Calvo: J♥ J♦ (18.54%)
De Melo: A♣ K♥ (5.09%)
Curto: A♠A♦ (57.55%)
It was actually De Melo who was in the worst shape here. Her percentage to win was about the same as a can of strong lager. The Aces of Curto were a solid favourite to win the hand and cause a rare triple knockout.
The flop fell 5♣ 8♠5♠and improved Curto to 77.32% to triumph in this hand, Geilich meanwhile, with his backdoor straight draw was now the most likely to crack aces. The 10♣ turn was a total brick and it left De Melo drawing dead. Curto now had just four outs to dodge on the river and he did just that as the 2♣ completed the board.
The pot sent the last remaining Team Pro and former champion to the rail and vaulted Curto into the chip lead with a stack of 3.65 million.