This week, “Poker After Dark: The Cash Game” continued on NBC. The “$150,000 Cash Game” began last week and began on Monday night with Full Tilt Poker pro Eli Elezra up $182,000. The big loser after the first week of play was Olivier Busquet, who was down $81,000 after five sessions. The action continues all this week at 2:05am ET on NBC and has blinds of $300/$600.
A major hand early saw Elezra make a well-timed laydown to preserve his lead. In it, the Israeli bet $11,000 on a flop of 9-10-5 holding pocket queens for an overpair. Unabomber Poker front man Phil Laak, who held pocket nines for a set, bumped the action to $50,000 and Elezra amazingly laid it down. Laak had been acting fairly wily throughout the entire episode, making Elezra’s fold even more impressive.
A rare triple straddle occurred midway through the show. Busquet, still stuck tens of thousands of dollars, picked up pocket tens and raised to $12,000 only to see Elezra move all-in from the third straddle with pocket jacks. The night featured several impressive laydowns and Busquet folded his pocket pair. The East Coast poker player said he thought Elezra had jacks, which we’d qualify as a “sick read.”
In Monday night’s largest pot, Busquet called the double straddle of $2,400 with 7-6 suited and Greg “FBT” Mueller smooth called with pocket kings. Laak, holding just A-3, raised it up to $23,400 and Elezra made the call with A-Q. Busquet got out of the way and Mueller came over the top all-in for $87,200. Elezra made the call after quite a bit of deliberation to set up a monstrous $201,900 pot.
Both players agreed to run it twice. In the first, the board ran out 10-5-Q-K-Q, taking away many of Elezra’s outs and giving half of the pot to Mueller with a full house. The second board fell 9-10-J-J-4. Mueller dodged a straight draw to scoop the entire pot and send his chip stack soaring to over $50,000 in profit. Despite the setback, Elezra was still up $113,000, albeit $70,000 less than he started the evening with.
In the final hand of Monday night’s hour-long episode of “Poker After Dark,” Elezra picked up A-10 and raised to $2,400 and Busquet 3bet to $7,500 with Big Slick. High-stakes cash game guru David “Viffer” Peat picked up pocket aces and made it $30,000 and his two opponents got out of the way. Busquet continued to pick up the second best hand each time and the credits rolled on Monday’s episode.
Full Tilt Poker front man Howard Lederer also participated in the “Poker After Dark” high-stakes cash game, but was largely quiet throughout this week’s kickoff episode. The two-week ring game will run through Friday night at 2:05am ET and a special “Director’s Cut” will air on Saturday following “Saturday Night Live.”
The next new episodes of “Poker After Dark” won’t air until the week of April 4th, when a $50,000 sit and go will hit television screens. The six-handed table features Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger, Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin, Melanie Weisner, Doyle Brunson, Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad, and Tom “durrrr” Dwan. Check your local listings for more details.