Jeff Saunders: From 200K to 1.8M in 10 Minutes?

Photo: Floorperson Andrew Wong (right) is on hand to color up the suddenly-massive stack of Jeff Saunders (left).

With the board showing [10c6d3c7s] on the turn, Jeremy Brown checks the big blind, Jean Gaspard bets about 70,000, and Jeff Saunders raises it an additional 150,000. Brown folds, and Gaspard thinks for a bit before he calls.

The river card is the [8s], Gaspard checks, and Saunders moves all in for 542,000. Gaspard asks for an exact count before he goes into the tank. Gaspard has about 1 million left in his stack.

After a while, Gaspard asks, "Why are you so nervous?" Saunders glances down at his chips and says, "I’m all in. It’s my tournament life."

Gaspard thinks a bit longer and says, "Do you have ace-ten? Did you go crazy over there?" Saunders says nothing. Gaspard says, "I’ve made a lot of bad reads in my life. I call."

Saunders turns over [9h8h] for a ten-high straight on the turn, and Gaspard mucks. Saunders wins the pot.

Jeff Saunders  –  1,805,000  (112 bb)
Jeremy Brown  –  1,590,000  (99 bb)
Jean Max Gaspard  –  454,000  (28 bb)

As Saunders pulls in the pot, Brown tells the table, "I had ace-ten." Then Brown looks at Saunders’ stack and says, "This dude went from two-hundred to one-point-six in 10 minutes." (Confirmation: We had a chip count of about 285,000 for Saunders about 10 minutes earlier.)