WSOP Day 4: Tyron falls at a table of death

By Simon Young

Tyron Krost had it tough when he moved to the same table as Allen Cunningham. But it got a whole lot worse when Gus Hansen later sat down as well. You expect to face better pros deep in an event, but even so our qualifier from Australia was unlucky to find these particular sharks circling his table.

With one of the shorter stacks, Tyron had little room to do much at all, and with Hansen being so aggressive, he had to sit and wait for a spot and hope for a double up.

Another 24,000 raise (blinds 4,000-8,000) came from the Dane, and this time Tyron thought enough was enough. He pushed his remaining 85,000 into the middle holding A-J spades. Hansen made the call with 6-6. “I want to play,” he said. “One of us is going to get lucky.”

The flop came 8-6-3 all clubs, giving Hansen the set, and with no clubs in either hand, Tyron could only hope for another club on the turn and river for a chopped flush. The turn came 7 clubs, raising Tyron’s hopes a little. “I still have a better hand than I started with,” said Hansen, “and at least I can’t lose.”

The river, however, was 4 of hearts, and Tyron collected his bag and headed for the cage to pick up $35,383 for his 249th-place finish. “I just could not get it going today,” he said.

That leaves James McManus and Stephen Kenna, both from Ireland, as our remaining PartyPoker qualifiers. James took a hefty 275,000 hit to his stack a short while ago when he got it in good with K-K against J-J. But a jack on the river saw James shifting a sizeable chunk of his stack to his neighbour. He’s now on 900,000.

Stephen Kenna got the opposite fortune – after slipping down the leaderboard, he just moved up to 620,000 when his 10-10 made a set on the flop against an opponent’s K-K.

** James just showed his heart when, on the big blind he faced a raise from the cut-off, a call from the button and a re-reraise from David “Raptor” Benefield in the small blind. What was James to do from his big blind? Re-re-raise, of course, and everyone folded. Aces, perhaps? Apparently not – James flashed one card… a seven.