I have such a lousy vantage point here that I can't get the action on any hand until it becomes so important that I hover over the table. So I get the end part. But on this hand, DOUBLE the biggest in the Million Dollar Cash Game, it wasn't about strategy. It was about balls.
Here is how it went down just before 9 PM:
Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius, mano a mano. The board on the turn was Ac-As-Jc-5d.
Ivey bet $100,000 and Patrik called.
The river was the queen of hearts.
There was $325,000 in the pot. Phil took a long, long time thinking of the initial action. I estimate about four minutes, because it seemed like an hour. I wrote on a note card, looking at the video monitor in the bar showing both mens' faces, "A couple fierce looking warrior He bet $225,000. Allen Cunningham had walked back to the bar and said, "Phil just breathed a sigh of relief because Patrik didn't call right away." He predicted A-K for Ivey.
Patrik is looking at his chips, putting aside the $225,000, and holding his finger to his lips. THIS thinking looks a lot different than the "thinking" he was doing before the check-raise against Townsend. After a couple minutes, he quietly said, "'I call."
Ivey turned over J-J for a full house. Patrik mucked.
The pot was $775,000, one of the biggest cash pots ever contested not involving Andy Beal. (Jeremiah Smith told me that
Patrik Antonius said in a brief break in play "that he'd been in several million dollar pots at the Bellagio last summer, but they'd run it, like, four times.")
http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/poker-blog/2007/09/250l_london_journal_16l_million_dollar_cash_game_27_balls_times_infinity.php
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