David Katzov came out the winner for his first Circuit ring in the Freezeout tonight, but it took more than 3 levels of heads-up play to do it. He and runner-up Xerxes Ng went at it for more than an hour as the blinds shrank.
They each had their chances to end it, but the cards wouldn’t cooperate, sending doubles to the short stack over and over. In the final level of play, there were fewer than 30 big blinds in play, and the lead swapped back and forth with just blinds and antes.
After a fairly quick run from the final table down to 3 players, things stalled a bit three-handed. It took two levels of short-stack doubles before Vikram Gill’s luck ran out. He actually built up the biggest stack three ways at one point, then ran into the short-stack double problem.
After he busted in Level 28, it looked like it should have been a fairly quick end. Ng started heads up as a big leader, but the lead flipped around a lot during the final phase. In the end, it was an unconventional flip that ended it when Ng called his button, Katzov shoved, and Ng called it off.
Ng had ace-eight against king-nine for Katzov, and Katzov spiked his nine on the flop of 9♣7♥J♠2♥2♦ to end the game nearly 13 hours after the first hands were dealt.
