We caught up with a rather unhappy-looking Joao Barbosa, heads up with the very beautiful Lucille Cailly on a flop. You'd think he'd be pleased.
Nevertheless, Cailly checked, before calling an 800 bet from Barbosa. Both players checked the turn, and Cailly checked the river too. Barbosa now bet 2,100 and after a moment's thought Cailly called - but Barbosa turned over which she could not beat, and Barbosa picked up some much-needed chips.
With around 4,500 in the pot by the river of the board, Dario Minieri bet out 2,800. His opponent called, but Minieri's reputation must have preceded him as Mr. Opponent was clearly not expecting Minieri actually ot have anything. Minieri turned over for two pair, Mr. Opponent mucked, and there is still no-one near Minieri in terms of stack size at this time.
Patrick Bruel raised to 900 under the gun, and Praz Bansi called. Next to act, Alberto Valenti made it 2,225, leaving himself 10,200 behind. It folded back to Bruel, who four-bet to 7,900. Bansi was happy to duck out of the way. Valenti, on the other hand, didn't look thrilled with the spot, but he dutifully shoved the rest of his chips into the middle. Bruel called and quickly tabled his hand while the dealer had to prod Valenti several times before he showed.
Bruel:
Valenti:
"Ok, that's not bad," said Bruel.
The flop was safe for Valenti, as was the on the turn. But the on the river earned a loud curse from the Italian. He stared at the board angrily for a moment, then collected himself enough to shake Patrick's hand on the way out. Bruel is now up to 74,000 in chips.
It's been a pretty slow day for Rob Hollink by the looks of it. Most recently we witnessed him raising to 1,025 in the cutoff, only to be confronted by an all-in reraise from Andrei One in the big blind, totalling less than 6,000. Hollink swallowed many long seconds of playing time thinking about it, before folding. He remains on around his 30,000 starting stack.
They're breaking pretty swiftly now, but there's still a handful of tables down the corridor in the back room. Please enjoy these notable chip counts from way back there:
Catherine Hong - 58,000
Luca Pagano - 95,000
Melanie Weisner - 10,700
Jeremy Amsellem - 40,000
Stephan Kjerstad - 30,000
Rob Hollink - 30,000
Just before the start of the day today, Glo caught up with ElkY to pick his brain about this EPT event. ElkY offered up some predictions and talked about what it's like to be playing major tournament poker on his home soil. You've got a few minutes to kill, so check it out: