For a number of the first two hours of Day 3, the overall rule was to not get entangled with chip leader Derek Ecenarro, dug in behind his massive stack at the feature table and usually holding sway because the day started to unfold.
After the eliminations of Carter Gill (31st), Gino Guidi Moreno (30th), and Osvaldo Rene Lewis (29th) -- the latter seeing his J♠T♠ fail him against Guillermo Musik's A♠K♦ -- Brian England got himself right into a difficult situation after losing most of his stack to Ecenarro. Soon after England was flipping for his tourney life, and the cards falling the opposite direction he, too, was out in 28th.
Rodrigo Quezada of Chile would next fall in 27th after his A♠Q♠ failed him against Ariel Scarparro's A♣T♣ when a 10 came a number of the community cards, followed by Joaquin Matias Ruiz of Argentina in 26th.
But then Fabian Ortiz -- the LAPT2 Chile champion and 17th-place finisher within the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event -- decided to move against that rule and tangle with Ecenarro.
It was a three-way pot near the tip of Level 20, and with the board showing Q♦8♣K♦7♥ Ortiz checked from the large blind, Ecenarro fired a half-pot bet of 115,000 from the cutoff, and after the button folded Ortiz took a half-minute before calling.
The river then brought the K♥ to pair the board, and Ortiz quickly checked. Ecenarro unhesitatingly carved out 230,000 this time, and once the bet was announced Ortiz called with alarming quickness.
Also alarming was the sight of Ecenarro firing his cards into the muck only a beat after Ortiz's call, conceding the pot and making it unnecessary for the Argentinian to show his hand.
The tables now turned, Ortiz has grabbed the chip lead with greater than 1.13 million while Ecenarro slips to only under 950,000.
Fabian Ortiz
With 25 left to start out Level 21, Ortiz eyes the potential of joining his fellow countryman Team PokerStars Pro Nacho Barbero as a two-time LAPT champ.
We'll see how Ortiz handles the chip lead going forward, and the way Ecenarro handles his rule suddenly being challenged.
Photography from LAPT7 Panama by Carlos Monti. Click here for live updates in Spanish, and here for live updates in Portuguese. Also take a look at the start-to-finish live streaming coverage (in both Spanish and Portuguese) at PokerStars.tv.
Martin Harris is Freelance Contributor to the PokerStars Blog.
Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: Latin American Poker Tour]
No comments:
Post a Comment