After just under a dozen hands of hand-for-hand play the money bubble in Event 7 has burst. The hand that brought the bad news for one unfortunate player started out in a strange way and that continued…
Matthew Grocholsky was under the gun and he open shoved his 47K stack. To his immediate left, Joe Gualtieri was heard to exclaim, “All In” and immediately started protesting that he meant that Matthew was all in, not that he had any intention of shoving. The dealer protected the muck and ensured that Joe couldn’t muck his hand until the floor was called.
The floor person listened to the dealer and in the end gave Joe a warning because there was legitimate uncertainty of whether Joe had said it as a question or had said, “he’s all in” or something of that nature.
In any case, the player in the cutoff (Darcy J Wright) was waiting to act while all of this was going on. As soon as it was cleared up he immediately called the all-in bet, leaving 79K behind. The action folded around to the big blind, Tanveer Dhanjal, who was also the massive chip leader at the table.
Tanveer took up a large stack of 25K chips and raised to 300K – more than enough to put Darcy all-in. Being put to the decision, he asked for a rules clarification – that if they were the only two to bust on that hand, whether he would be the player in the money due to his larger starting stack, and the floor answered yes (hands at the other tables had all been completed).
Finally Darcy called, and two players’ tournament lives were at stake.
The players flipped over their cards. The original raiser had shoved with 
. Darcy was holding 
, and Tanveer flipped over the 
.
The board ran out 
– so far very safe for Tanveer. The turn was the 
and the river brought out the 
and Darcy celebrated with a loud “SANTA MARIA” that was heard all around the room.
