Simon Johansson has sent Wally Wenceslao crashing to the rail when all the chips found their way into the middle on a board of . Wenceslao held but found himself a long behind Johansson who turned over for quads!
Johansson now sits with 35,000 chips to be amongst our chip leaders.
Our original field of 103 has been reduced to just 54 players, with around 30 minutes until the scheduled dinner break.
With the players starting to drop away pretty quickly, we may end the day with a rather small field if we play the full ten levels that are scheduled. With the promise of a payout to the top 40 players, it could potentially mean that we will be very close to the money stage of the tournament at the end of today's play! An interesting dilemma for officials here with around double the number of players expected to hit the felt tomorrow.
Everything is going Carter Gill's way today. With position, he called a preflop raise to 1,200 made by Johnny Chan. The small blind also came along for a highly coordinated flop.
"That looks like death," remarked Gill.
All three players checked through to the turn. The small blind again checked. Chan bet 1,200, bringing a raise from Gill to 3,800. The small blind folded, but Chan called after taking about 20 seconds to think through his decision. The river came . Both players checked.
"I might have rivered you," said Gill. "I have a flush. Three-high." He opened .
Chan grimaced and shook his hands in frustration. He flipped his cards to the dealer face-up, showing for a turned Broadway straight. The dealer killed his hand and started to push the pot to Gill.
"I had a flush," joked Chan. "Two red cards, right?"
As he was stacking yet another pot, Gill told Chan, "My friend was wrong about you. Your bet sizing. He said when you bet the same on the flop as you did preflop, it's a good spot to raise you. It was completely wrong this time."
"You got away with murder," agreed another player at the table.
Murder or not, Gill now has about 76,000 in chips while Chan has dropped to about 13,400.
Just before the dinner break, a player in middle position at Nam Le's table opened for 1,200 preflop. Le called before Wooka Kim reraised to 5,400, enough to put the middle position player all in. He called; Le folded.
Kim:
MP:
The board ran out , making a set for both players. Kim's was best. The pot went her way, pushing her stack up to 16,500.
Xuan Tien Nguyen has just taken down a nice pot just prior to the dinner break. In a limped pot, Nguyen called 1,200 on the flop, 2,600 on the turn and finally 5,500 on the river on a board. His opponent flipped for a busted straight draw and Nguyen tabled for trip eights.
With that pot Nguyen heads to dinner with around 44,000 chips.
Tournament director Matt Savage recently made an announcement that we will definitely be playing all ten levels scheduled for today, despite the somewhat accelerated pace of eliminations.