We may have lost the last Loose Cannon, but The Big Game on Tour continues, and the latest episode was one of the most entertaining in the last couple of seasons.
Things were already looking good on the PokerStars sponsored show with Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari at the same table, but it was Gronk who surprised the poker world. The NFL star was pretty shy during the first three sessions, but something has clearly changed, as this time around, he was firing on all cylinders, catching the pros completely off guard.
Esfandiari and Nick Wright also decided to spice things up, setting up a $2,500 side bet on who gets to felt Phil Hellmuth. The Poker Brat wasn’t upset about this development, knowing this would cause the two to play more hands than they should and likely give him an opportunity to recoup some of his losses.
Gronk Takes on the Pros
Things haven’t actually gone Gronk’s way so far on The Big Game. His cautious approach resulted in his chip stack slowly dwindling away. After nearly 80 hands, he’s had enough and decides to take a completely different approach.
After winning a nice pot against Antonio with pocket kings, Gronk found new courage and decided to play a few hands completely blind. His plan worked great against Esfandiari, whom he called down all the way to the river without ever checking his hole cards, only to proceed to raise him on the river.
It was a stone-cold bluff, but Gronk maintained he misread his hand and actually thought he had a flush. Was he telling the truth? You be the judge.
Shortly after, he got in another confrontation with Antonio, and once more, he refused to look at his cards. Antonio kept betting, Gronk kept calling, and finally, on the river, facing a $3,000 bet, he looked down at king-high. Yet, somehow, on a board featuring a pair of aces and all low cards, he found a call, and he was right. The Magician sheepishly turned over his jack-high, sending the pot of over $13,000 Gronk’s way.
This is clearly not a healthy strategy, but somehow it has worked for Gronk so far. He managed to recoup nearly all of his losses, and he is now down only $6,000. It’ll be interesting to see if he keeps it up for the final session.
It’s an Open Season on Phil
It’s no secret that Phil Hellmuth is usually one of the tightest players at the table, biding his time and waiting for his opponents to walk into a trap. He and Antonio have been engaged in some good-natured ribbing from the very start of the show.
During the last session, Nick Wright added some fuel to the fire, suggesting to Antonio that they should have a side bet on who’ll be the first to take Hellmuth’s chips. The two settled on an amount of $2,500, meaning that if one of them were to felt Phil, they’d get $2,500 on top of whatever happens to be in the pot.
Not long after the bet was placed, Nick found himself in what looked like a good spot to accomplish the mission. Phil flopped two pair while Nick had a king-high flush draw. Unfortunately, Hellmuth boated up on the turn, and Wright was dead to one out.
A flush did come in on the river, so all chips went into the middle, but instead of picking up the bounty, Nick received some bad news. His hand was second-best, and instead of taking Phil’s chips, he doubled him up.
We are now headed into the final session, and one player coming back as the big winner is actually Rania Nasreddine. She stayed out of all the shenanigans, playing some solid poker and making some really good reads along the way, allowing her to amass a profit of $110,000.
