As intimated at 1.20pm, we have just seen an absolutely monstrous pot here, and it's taken some time to write up. Here we have it:
Just when you get a little jaded with poker, a hand comes along to blow your mind again. It's just happened here in Los Angeles, where the overnight chip leader, Christopher Demaci, has just knocked out the man closest to him in the counts, Micah Raskin, within the first orbit. Needless to say, this was the biggest pot of the tournament so far, at more than 6 million. Raskin is gone, Demaci is in complete control, and this is what happened:
Raskin was slightly late getting to the table today and missed a couple of hands. He hadn't fully un-bagged his chips when he raised to 70,000 from the cut off and DeMaci three bet to 120,000 from the button. None of this was all that extraordinary - Raskin's bet size was consistent with how he was opening yesterday, and DeMaci has done an awful lot of three-betting in position.
Raskin called. Just before the flop came down, Joe Tehan reminded Raskin that he still had chips in his bag. "I know," said Raskin, and it might not have mattered too much had the following not then occurred. The flop came J♣T♣T♦ and Raskin checked. DeMaci counted out a bet of 181,000 and Raskin pretty much instantly announced a raise, to 400,000 straight.
He slid in four towers of blue chips to represent that raise, but DeMaci then wanted to know how much more he had. (It looked to the casual observer that Raskin was pretty-much all in because all his biggest chips were still concealed.)
"Can you stack his chips," asked DeMaci of the tournament staff. "I want to know how much he has." And then we were treated to the unusual sight of two men in suits stacking up huge piles of chips, with Raskin sitting in the middle of them, silent.
This continued as DeMaci called the raise, taking them to a A♠ turn. Raskin almost instantly announced that he was all in for what what eventually determined to be about 1.4 million. The men in suits stepped back, but now a huge crowd had surrounded the table, scenting a tournament-defining moment.
DeMaci was in agony. "This isn't a nit-roll," he said. "This can't be happening. There's no way this is happening." He looked back a few times at his cards. "There's no way this is happening. What do you guys think I have?" he asked the rail, but no one replied. "This could be the sickest one ever. I don't think I can pass."
Eventually, after a good five or six minutes, DeMaci called. He flipped over A♥T♠ for the turned boat. Raskin sheepishly showed 6♠6♣ for a huge bluff gone awry. The river was a blank.
In the aftermath, and as the players shook hands ahead of Raskin heading to the cage, DeMaci said: "The speech made me feel a lot better. He told me if I folded I'd still have chips."
None of the people on the rail had heard Raskin say that, but DeMaci did. The crucial snippet of information was missed by most, but heard, crucially, by the man who is now the clear, clear chip leader. He has more than six million and can't believe what just happened. Neither can anyone else.
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