Putting a Rufas Over Everyone's Head

[user46392]

This is an epic hand. Epic. In every sense.

It opened innocuously enough with a simple standard raise from the gentleman in the hijack. To his left, Salvatore Ferone called in the cutoff. It folded around to overnight chip leader Luis Rufas, who reraised to around 21,000. Both players called.

Now, we'd stopped by Senor Rufas' table largely because he looked at the start of the hand as though he might have regained the chip lead. But by the end of the hand, he would be without a shadow of a doubt our massive chip monster.

So, all three players saw a {2-Clubs} {4-Spades} {3-Clubs} flop. Rufas was first to act, and he spent a few moments contemplating the board before asking Ferone, who had the most chips out of his two opponents, "Excuse me, about 100?" In response, Ferone for some reason started dividing his chips out into stacks of five. This took a long time and eventually Rufas waved his hand to indicate that it wasn't important. Ferone's stack, a trained blogger could tell you, comprised about 125,000 in chips. After another pause, Rufas bet out 37,200.

Back to the original raiser in the hijack, whose stack totalled 90,000 or so. He tanked for a long time, perhaps five minutes, before flat-calling. But to his left, Ferone now moved all in.

Rufas sighed and buried his head in the crook of his arm for a few moments, before smiling, nodding, and making the call. The original raiser tanked up for another couple of minutes, talking to himself, but eventually folded.

Showdown!

Rufas: {a-Clubs} {q-Clubs} for the flush draw
Ferone: {4-Hearts} {4-Diamonds} for top set