The younger brother of Franky Funk, Nick Funaro, found himself coming into Tuesday’s WPT bestbet Scramble final table in second place with an opportunity to secure his second major title of the year.
However, it wasn’t meant to be, as the 22-year-old crashed out in shocking fashion, finishing in fifth place just two levels into final table play, despite starting the day with 74 big blinds.
The first hour-and-a-half did not go Funaro’s way, seeing his opponents chip away at his massive stack, mostly against the very aggressive and unconventional Eric Afriat.
Yunis sniffs it out
After the elimination of Dion Jagroo, they were down to five-handed towards the end of Level 25, with the blinds at 30,000/60,000.
Action folded to Chile’s Nick Yunis, who was playing off a very comfortable stack of 2.78 million (46 big blinds. Yunis picked up 
in the small blind and while many would opt to give Funaro a walk, Yunis limped in. Funaro, playing off of a stack of 1,465,000 (24bbs), checked behind with 
.
The flop came 
, giving Yunis bottom two pair while Funaro picked up a backdoor flush draw as well as multiple backdoor straight draws. Yunis put in a bet of 60,000 and Funaro, understandably, put in a raise to 180,000 with a bunch of potential turn barrels. Yunis made the call.
On the 
turn, Yunis led out for 135,000 into the 540,000-chip pot, which should have been the end of the action. However, after taking some time, Funaro came in with a second raise in succession, this time to 450,000. Yunis made the call.
The river brought the 
and, after Yunis checked, Funaro moved all in for 835,000 into the 1,440,000-chip pot. After using three of his five remaining time banks and questioning if Funaro had the same hand or Q8, Yunis made the call to eliminate Funaro in fifth place for $93,000. The Chilean, meanwhile, saw his stack skyrocket to 4,395,000 (73 big blinds).
'You can argue that it's a punt.'
While many would commend Funaro’s guts in the hand, his shocking elimination is sure to garner a lot of criticism from the poker world.
As Tony Dunst said on the WPT broadcast: “You can argue that it’s a punt. You have no pair, no equity on the turn. You’re at the final table with a medium stack. You don’t really need to do that kind of thing.
“Generally, your bluffs, especially your multiple street bluffs, should have some equity so you have ways to win the hand. So I’m not necessarily a fan of the way Funaro chose to play his hand. But I admire the guts it took to play it that way and how much pressure he put on Nick Yunis. I think towards the end of his tank, Yunis realized that there’s just not that much value that makes sense there.”
However, Funaro played spectacularly all week and there’s no doubt that we’ll see him in more big spots going forward. For today, it’s going to be a hard pill to swallow.
Photos courtesy of World Poker Tour/Katerina Lukina
