Foxwoods Poker Classic Down to Final Six

The field narrowed from eighteen to six Tuesday as the World Poker Tour’s Foxwoods Poker Classic prepared to hand out the $1,272,905 first prize out of the almost $4 million prize pool.

The two chip leaders going into Tuesday were Antonio Cavezza and Rajendra Patel, who, with around $1.2 million in chips each, had a sizeable lead over the rest of the field.  Neither made much headway over the first couple hours – Patel did knock out the first player, but proceeded do double-up some short stacks to cancel out anything he had won.  In the third hour, however, Cavezza lost around $500,000 to fall back to the back.

Patel began his run in the fourth hour by first knocking out Justin Pechie when his J-T got lucky by making the broadway straight against Pechie’s K-J.  Up to $1.6 million, Patel was looking down at the rest of the field, but now Seth Berger and Ted Lawson were beginning to make moves, climbing up to almost the million chip mark. 

By the time the final table was convened just after the fourth hour of play, Patel had inched up a bit more, while Berger had made a huge leap, thanks to a felting of Nam Le, sending Berger up to $1.45 million.  After another hour, Berger was in about the same place, whereas Patel continued to make strides, breaking the $2 million barrier.  The other eight players were, for the most part, holding steady. 

At the end of the seventh hour, Patel was almost to $3 million, Berger again was hovering around $1.4 million, and Cavezza had finally earned back some chips, flirting with the $900,000 mark.  In the meantime, Allen Kessler, Ted Lawson, and Fred Goldberg were all struggling, but not as much as Frank Flowers, who only had eight big blinds left.   

After ten hours (which included dinner), the final six were set for the television table.  Patel was still the chip leader, with Berger still in second, barely having his stack change at all for hours, while Cavezza had recovered to finish the day with more chips than he started.  Fred Goldberg bounced back nicely from his earlier slide, finishing with over a million chips, while Paul Matteo and Allen Kessler were the short stacks. 

Play will resume Wednesday at 5:00pm. 

Final Table Chip Counts 

1. Rajendra Patel -- 3,347,000
2. Seth Berger -- 1,505,000
3. Antonio Cavezza -- 1,391,000
4. Fred Goldberg -- 1,044,000
5. Paul Matteo -- 570,000
6. Allen Kessler -- 444,000

Originally published 9:54 AM Wednesday, April 04, 2007