Adam Neal is steamrolling the final table a little – his mass of chips giving him all the weapons he needs to bully and push around the shorter stacks. After picking up several pots with raises and c-bets, Deane Meegan raised it up to 100k from the cut-off.
Passed to Neal in the big blind, he made the call and the board peeled off 9c 5h 3h. Neal checked and Meegan looked at his stack, looked at the clock, pondered for a few seconds, and moved all-in for 450k.
“Imagine if you’ve hit that flop!” said Meegan, laughing. It turned out Neal had hit it as he made the call with 9s 6s but Meegan tabled Qs Qd for a healthy advantage. Tournament life in the balance, Meegan lived to fight another day as the 8d Th run out contained no monsters.
He doubles to near 1.2 million while Neal is still in dominating shape – his 3.3 million stack dwarfing that of most of the other players. Martin Noonan isn’t too far off though with 2.5 million and, crucially, position on Neal, so could yet cause him some troubles as this final progresses.