Vanessa Rousso Doubles Thru Antonio Esfandiari

Antonio Esfandiari raises to 53,000 from under the gun, Vanessa Rousso calls from the cutoff, and Kia Mohajeri calls out of the big blind.

The flop falls [8h8c4s] and Mohajeri checks.  Esfandiari bets 111,000, Rousso calls, and Mohajeri folds.  The turn is the [8d] and Esfandiari bets 260,000.  Rousso thinks for a couple of minutes, pulls out the amount of chips for a call from her stack, and eventually calls.

The river is the [7c] and Esfandiari thinks for just a few moments before moving all-in.  Rousso sits in silence for a minute, staring at the board.  She stands, stares at the pot some more, then sits back down again.  

"You don’t look scared at all Antonio," she tells him.  "I have the weirdest feeling you have aces."  She pauses a moment, then adds, "I don’t think you have an eight."  She takes a beat, then takes a new line in her table talk.

"What do you think I have?  Anything?"

She continues, "You think I can make a tough call."  She repeats this phrase to herself a couple more times.  After a lengthy staredown of her opponent, she decides she is taking up too much time and calls the clock on herself.

Rousso gets around halfway through the countdown before she calls and shows [10h10c].  Esfandiari silently mucks and Rousso springs from her seat.

"Oh my God, that was the hardest thing ever," she tells the table.  She is giddy and jittery as she stacks her chips, talking more about how tough the hand was.  

"I need a break, I need a break," she says to herself.  "That’s all I can say, I need a break."

Meanwhile, Esfandiari simply sits in silence, having lost the chip lead for the first time in three days.

Vanessa Rousso – 2,500,000 (125 bbs)
Antonio Esfandiari – 1,310,000 (66 bbs)