Jake Cody opened the pot from the small blind, raising to 102,000. Teodor Caraba made the call from the big, and it was off to the flop.
The dealer spread out . Cody continued out with a bet of 122,000, and Caraba didn't waste much time making the call. The landed on fourth street, and Cody wasn't going to stab again. He knocked the table, and he folded relatively quickly to a bet of 300,000.
There's been a theme to the recent hands at Table 1. Mike McDonald puts chips into the pot and doesn't get any back. Here are the last two:
Michael Fratty completed the small blind, and McDonald checks his option to see a flop heads up. It comes . Fratty taps the table, Timex stabs 125k at it, and Fratty promptly moves all in. McDonald pretends to think for a few seconds but gives it up.
A few hands later, McDonald opens to 90k under the gun, Jake Cody repopped to 199,000, and McDonald laid it down.
After a rough go of it since doubling up Alexia Portal (whose lost all of those extra chips since being moved to the feature table), Timex is down from a high of over 4 million to around 1.3 million.
We're back with the final 10 players and the blinds at a rather significant 25,000/50,000 with an ante of 5,000 apiece. Play on, lady and gents.
The EPT Live crew is hard at work providing multi-lingual commentary for today's action. Check out their feed if you want to see what we're talking about here.
George Secara opened to 115,000 in the cutoff seat, and Stephane Albertini made the call in the next seat over. Action came to Craig Bergeron in the small blind, and he wanted to play for more. "Three ninety-five all day," he announced as he cut the chips into the pot. Secara sighed heavily and shook his head, but he didn't take much longer than that to make the call. Albertini decided folding was his best course of action, and he let the two go heads up the rest of the way.
A flop of appeared on board, and Bergeron was definitely betting. It was small, though -- just a leverage-y 295,000. Secara shrugged and called rather quickly again, and the hit fourth street. After pausing for a moment like a statue, Bergeron stacked together 390,000 chips and fired another slug. Secara delayed for a bit this time, and then he released his cards into the muck, sending a big pot over to the already-massively-stacked Craig Bergeron.
He's up close to 4.3 million now and his chip lead is just that much more secure.
Alexia Portal was down right around 450,000 chips, and her preflop options are duly limited. As such, she peeked down at and got it in there with her Broadway cards. Stephane Albertini took his time stacking out the amount and eyeballing his remaining stack before calling to put Ms. Portal at risk.
Showdown
Portal:
Albertini:
The dealer would fail to provide any salvation for the at-risk Frenchwoman. A board of will be the last five cards she sees today, relegated to the rail in 10th place. She'll receive a pay bump up to €51,500 for her fine work here this week.
During the last break, Glo caught up with Alexia to have a quick chat. As a parting gift to her fans, check out what she had to say before she was so rudely forced to leave:
With the last elimination, the field has been trimmed down to the final nine players. They have broken the secondary table, and they'll all reconvene on stage in just a few minutes at the last table left standing.
When they come back, we'll play on for one more elimination before calling it a night.
As if to make up for yesterday's marathon session, we look (touch wood!) set for an early night tonight.
Down to nine players, they're all moving on to a single table. Eight of the remaining runners will go through to the Final Table; the other one player will take home a wooden spoon worth exactly €51,500.
Seat 1: Claudius "The Artist Formerly Known As George*" Secara - 1,545,000
Seat 2: Jake Cody - 4,510,000
Seat 3: Michael Fratty - 1,590,000
Seat 4: Teodor Caraba - 5,090,000
Seat 5: Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier - 1,100,000
Seat 6: Peter Eastgate - 310,000
Seat 7: Craig Bergeron - 4,175,000
Seat 8: Stephane Albertini - 2,950,000
Seat 9: Mike "Timex" McDonald - 1,720,000
*He's down as George Secara, but it turns out he is actually Claudius. Apologies, Mr. Secara.