It's been a tale of two contrasting styles with our short stacks here at the ANZPT Perth final table. But ultimately the end result has been the same with Luke Brabin and James Broom both recently hitting the rail.
After landing a much-needed double up, James Broom was "jabbing" away at plenty of pots, adopting a small ball approach to try and accumulate chips.
At the other end of the table was Luke Brabin, who was also on the short stack. Brabin's strategy was from the "Kill Phil" book as he would regularly move all in for 15-20 big blinds to try and steal to keep his head above water.
He's probably wishing he'd maintained that preflop approach in a recent hand against chip leader Iori Yogo. It was a hand that would ultimately end in Brabin's elimination from the tournament.
Yogo opened with a min-raise from the cutoff to 16,000. Brabin was in the big blind and opted to call and see a flop of [kc][qs][kd]. Brabin checked to Yogo who bet out 22,000. Brabin responded with a check-raise all in for his last 116,000 but Yogo wasn't going anywhere as he immediately made the call with [kh][6s] for trip kings. Brabin threw his head back in dismay as he was virtually drawing dead holding [qc][th].
The [4c] turn and [9d] river sealed the deal, handing Yogo the pot and send Brabin to pick up $14,200 for his 8th place finish.
Moments later he was joined on the rail by James Broom.
Broom had got himself back into contention when he and his new friend, Dejan Divkovic, saw a flop of [3h][4h][jd]. Divkovic check-called for 17,000 before the [6c] brought another bet of 31,000 from Broom. Divkovic came back with a check-raise to 100,000 which Broom called before the [3s] paired the board on the river.
Divkovic bet out 175,000 which was enough to put Broom to a decision for his entire stack.
"I flopped two pair!" sighed Broom before tossing in his last chips with [jc][4d]. The bad news was that Divkovic had turned his gutshot with [7c][5c] to make a straight and take it down. Divkovic has the last laugh between the two online foes as Broom takes home $18,500 for 7th place.
Iori Yogo is still our chip leader with almost 1.4 million for a clear advantage over the field, with Dale Marsland and Dejan Divkovic next best with around 800,000.