Cavezza, Patel Neck-and-Neck After Foxwoods Poker Classic Day 3

With $8.3 million in chips on the tables, the race for the chip lead is about as close as it can be after Day 3 of the no-limit hold’em championship at the Foxwoods Poker Classic. Antonio Cavezza and Rajendra Patel are almost deadlocked at the top of the standings, Cavezza with $1.275 million in chips, and Patel with $1.2 million. They are light years ahead of the third place competitor, Justin Pechie, who “only” has $772,000.

Cavezza used two huge hands to build a significant portion of his stack. He started the day with close to a quarter million chips and within three hours, had increased his count by about twenty percent. Just behind him in the standings, with almost the same stack, was Amnon Filippi. Close the end of the third hour, the two got all their chips in the pot pre-flop, Cavezza with A-A and Filippi with K-K. Cavezza improved to a set, knocking out Filippi, and taking the chip lead with close to $700,000.

Several hours later, near the end of the day, added around another $300,000 to his stack after he flopped a set of 8’s. That was the good news. The great news was that Peter Chabot held K-K and couldn’t get away from it on the turn, leaving the tournament in 20^th place.

Patel began play with $165,000 and was able to gradually double himself up over the course of five and a half hours. Within the next hour and a half, Patel used a series of knock outs to more than double-up once again. First he eliminated Nathan Childress, A-J over K-5. Then he flopped a straight on Rick Galvin, whose J-J looked good on a 4-8-7 board, prompting him to go all-in. Finally, his A-K out-raced Darrell Dicken’s T-T.

That got him to almost $700,000. The final leap came in a similar fashion to Cavezza’s. With pocket 6’s, Patel flopped a full-house when Tom Schreiber held A-A. As the board was a fairly non-threatening 8-8-6-5 by the turn, Schreiber pushed and lost.

Play will resume on Tuesday at noon. The total prize pool for the $10,000 event is almost $4 million, with the winner taking home $1,272,905.

Originally published 12:24 AM Tuesday, April 03, 2007