Penultimate level of Day 2, Blom still leads and Shulman leaves

Penultimate level of Day 2, Blom still leads and Shulman leaves

Saturday, 25 September 2010

We walk into the main floor at The Empire and, surprise surprise, Viktor Blom is involved in a hand. He mused upon whether to call Yevgeniy Timoshenko’s 21,000 shove over his raise and eventually threw in the chips. “Small pair?” he asked, and smiled: “I’m live” when Timoshenko turned over A-K.

“Jack nine ace flop would be fun,” he said to a laughing Jovial Gent but the dealer provided just one of those cards on a J-5-5 flop. The board ran blank and Timoshenko doubles to 45,000 while Blom still has over 425,000 and the chip lead. Blom is seated with James Mitchell and Chris Moorman with position on Jennifer Tilly. Wandering next to Ivey’s table, we spied him in a hand as well.

He called an UTG raise from the big blind after the button also called and check-called a 12,200 bet on a 7h-Ts-9s flop. Both players checked the 3c turn and Ivey checked to his opponent on the 2s river. A bet of 23,700 ensued followed by stoic silence.

Ivey took his iPod off and riffled 23,700 in chips; stared down the bettor; riffled some more; asked for a count; stared some more; transferred the 23,700 to his other hand and riffled some 500s; thought to himself; stared again; checked his cards and slid them muckwards. He still has a healthy stack of over 250,000 though.

During this long Ivey ponder, we heard that Barry Shulman had been eliminated and won’t be making a title defence in 2010. That means all the WSOPE winners are gone and we will have a new champion this year. Antonio Esfandiari also hit the rail at the hands of Barry Greenstein in a standard K-8 v Q-5 shortstack all-in showdown.



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