James Akenhead was slumped in his chair, with his head down, waiting for the final verdict to come. After he pushed his short-stack all in, Steven Begleiter called, and Eric Buchman reraised. As Begleiter pondered his decision, Akenhead was wondering if it was all about to end.
He smiled weakly and shook his head slowly, knowing his K-Q was no good. After Begleiter folded, he indeed saw that he was well behind Buchman’s A-K.
A flop and a turn later, Akenhead needed a queen and a queen only to extend his final-table stay. When the Q
came on the river, the Penn and Teller Theatre erupted, and Akenhead threw himself into the arms of his raucous supporters. One card from elimination, he had been given new life. He now sits with 12.5 million in chips, good for seventh place.
Before the energy of the double-up had even subsided, his fellow European Antoine Saout soon found himself all in with his tournament life at stake. But this time, the short-stack was well ahead.
Darvin Moon, who has been called everything from a card rack to the luckiest player in Las Vegas, proved in some of the later broadcasts that ESPN aired that he was capable of laying down some hands and pulling off the occasional bluff.
Well, this was a bluff attempt that went horribly awry.
After Saout opened up from the cutoff with a raise with a measly J-2, he hit the jackpot on a K-J-2 board. According to Card Player’s live updates, Moon bet into him, Saout raised, and Moon pushed all in. Saout snap-called and was presumably shocked with the rest of the Rio to see Moon only holding ace high and needing running cards to eliminate the Frenchman.
A 3 came on the turn to give Moon a gutshot-straight draw, but a blank river awarded Saout the huge pot to lift him to nearly 22 million in chips, good enough for fourth in chips. Despite the blunder, Moon remains in first place with just shy of 50 million of chips.
Here are the current chip counts, as of 3:45 p.m. PST:
Darvin Moon — 49,495,000
Eric Buchman — 35,135,000
Steven Begleiter — 24,820,000
Antoine Saout — 21,960,000
Joseph Cada — 16,635,000
Jeff Shulman — 14,780,000
James Akenhead — 12,515,000
Phil Ivey — 10,565,000
Kevin Schaffel — 8,960,000
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