No Jason. No Steve. They were at the league this week but no final table for either of them. They are already guaranteed a Main package so it was actually kind of them just to be there.
Allen was having some great hands and had a third place finish this week. Mark had A-T when Allen had A-Q. Later Trey ran QQ into Allen’s AA All in pre flop. Allen held.
The next hand Steve’s A-10>Derek’s A-Kdd. Derek flopped top pair, Steve rivered a straight or as Derek said “he sucked out.”
When the table was down to the final four and the blinds were 2500/5000, John Gordon made it 20K to go. Rob, the short stack with less than 8 bigs, defended his big blind with an all in. John called and turned over AJ off dominating Rob’s A8 suited. Rob was drawing dead to the 8 until he picked up a gut shot on the turn. He looked straight at Muscles and called for a 5 (mimicking an earlier exchange when John called for a 3 when he wasn’t in the hand which Cyndi then hit to suck out on Don). The 5 peeled off sending John into a diatribe Helmuth style berating Rob for his “horrible” play which he repeated several times until he was out shortly after in 4th. 
A little later Allen’s luck ran out when he and Rob got all of their chips in the middle when Rob flopped a straight holding QT against Allen’s AA which he had slow played preflop. The J98 flop crippled Allen who went out a couple of hands later in 3rd.
That gave Rob the chip lead over Chris who had dominated the final table. Chris offered a chop, but Rob said he wanted to play on. Rob and Chris got it all in preflop shortly after with Rob’s 10s dominating Chris’ 4s until the 4 flopped putting Chris back in the lead. A few hands later Rob agreed to Chris’ chop offer.
Rob wore his “I’m not dead yet” t-shirt for the first time this season and that is definitely the case now. With this chop/win Rob is in 13th place 7 points from the top ten. A decent final table finish next week could boost Rob to a minor package.
There is one more week this weason and the top 14 players are still in contention for a seat. Only Jason and Steve have locked up the Main packages so week 20 will definitely be a good one!!! After tomorrow – week 20 – there will still be a freeroll for the remaining players who do not win at least a minor by tomorrow.
In other news Tampa Bay Elite notable (or notorious?) alumnus Marvin “Duckman” Karlins just released his newest book “A Chip & a Prayer” which is available now on Amazon.
Help support this local talent & his research costs by picking up a copy & leaving a review on Amazon!
The final table in order of finish for week 19 was:
- Chris Hyden and Rob Benford (Chop)
- See above
- Allen Wiseman
- John Gordon
- Don Dean
- Kenny O’Donnell
- Derek Csanadi
- Cyndi Nguyen
- Clive Gavin
- Tom Clements
