$5,300 SHRPO Championship
Prizepool:  $4,195,250  |  Payouts  |  Results |  Structure
Level 23:  20,000/40,000 with a 40,000 ante
Players Remaining:  20 of 865

This was the last hand of the previous level, but we’re posting it out of order so people will be more likely to see it.

One hand after Charles Gomez doubled thru Martin Carnero by cracking his pocket kings, Carnero was under the gun, and the blinds alone would eat up half of his stack. And with 20 players remaining, there was a $6,000 pay jump looming for everyone who survived the next bustout.

Carnero had about ten Time Chips, and he used all of them to tank for more than five minutes before he raised to 175,000, leaving himself just 5K behind.

During that time, the rest of the table talked about really stretching out this hand, and even joked about the entire table burning all of their Time Chips preflop.

The next two players to act used their full 20 seconds before they folded, and then Ed Holyoke used about three Time Chips in the cutoff to tank for about two minutes before he folded.

During this time, there was an all-in-and-a-call at Table 7, but both players had king-jack, and it ended up with a chopped pot.

Brandon Kessous used three Time Chips to tank for about two minutes in the cutoff before he called from the button, and Martin Zamani used a Time Chip to tank for about a minute before he folded the small blind. Tyler Smith used a Time Chip to tank for about a minute before he folded the big blind.

So Carnero and Kessous were heading to the flop, and Carnero had just 5K left in his stack.

The flop came , and both players used their full 30 seconds before they checked.

The turn card double-paired the board with the , and again both players used their full 30 seconds before they checked.

At this point, more than 12 minutes after the hand started, Carnero said, “After all this time, I don’t know what I have. I never looked.” The other players laughed.

The river card was the , Carnero used the full 30 seconds before he checked, and Kessous used a Time Chip to tank for more than a minute — guaranteeing that this would be the last hand before the break — before he also checked.

Kessous showed for the two pair on the board with an ace kicker. Carnero, who hadn’t looked at his cards yet, needed an ace, a ten, an eight, or a six to stay alive.

Carnero flipped over — !

In a hand that was essentially a preflop all in but lasted about 15 minutes, Martin Carnero surprised himself by effectively doubling up with a full house, eights full of sixes.

And that’s how Level 23 ended.

Martin Carnero  –  455,000  (11 bb)
Brandon Kessous  –  3,790,000  (95 bb)

With 20 players remaining from a field of 865, the average chip stack is around 2,165,000 (54 big blinds). The remaining players are guaranteed at least $36,500 each.