The flop read and the gentleman in the big blind bet out 3,500. Guillaume de la Gorce, looking very intense, called from the button.
They saw a turn and this time Mr. Big Blind checked. De la Gorce now bet a hefty 10,000, and remained absolutely motionless and largely unblinking through the long minutes that his opponent dwelled up. Eventually Mr. Big Blind folded, and de la Gorce was up to 45,000.
Fifteen minutes becomes ten minutes this time of the evening, and the non-suppering players are already back in their seats with hole cards to squeeze.
Day 1A is in the books at EPT Snowfest 2010. We run down all the critical info for you to keep you up to date. Pay close attention. There may be a test later.
Ladies and gentlemen, registration is officially closed and the number of Day 1b runners comes to 276. With the 270 we got yesterday, that makes a total of 546 folks who were or are taking a shot at an EPT title here in Hinterglemm.
That brings the prizepool to almost €2 million - rather nice for a tournament being held in, as Alpine Palace general manager Florian Wolf put it, "The middle of nowhere."
With the board reading , Lex Veldhuis bet 1,600 and his opponent raised enough to cover the rest of Veldhuis' stack. Lex called all for 9,600 with and had his opponent's crushed.
The turn card and river cards were safe for Veldhuis, up to just over 20,000.
Hanh Tran, a big stack since flopping a set of tens to knock out another player in the first level, has taken a couple of hits.
First we saw him call a hefty bet on the river of a board. "Flush?" he hazarded as he called, and duly his opponent flipped . Tran mucked, and dipped to 85,000.
A few hands later and Tran raised to 800 in early position, only for Daniel van Kalkeren on the button to make it 2,100 to go. In the big blind, Rasmus Vogt turned to van Kalkeren and asked him how much he had left. The answer was 30,000, and Vogt opted to flat-call. Tran called too, and they saw a flop.
All three players checked the flop and they proceeded to the turn, at which point Vogt bet out 2,750. Tran called, van Kalkeren folded, and they went heads up to the river.
The river was the and Vogt bet out 6,700. Tran made it 15,000 and after a moment's consideration Vogt tossed in the call. Tran flipped , playing the straight on the board - and Vogt took th pot with pocket .
Tran made some "pfft"-type noises and dropped to 65,000; Vogt made no sound at all and moved on up to 62,000.
EPT Berlin champion Kevin MacPhee must have had a rather good last level or so. We saw him lose a pot just now - sighing and showing on a board, not good enough to beat his opponent's - but despite this loss, he's still sitting on a very respectable 42,000.
Sorry, gents - it pains us to report that EPT Dortmund winner and Team PokerStars Pro Sandra Naujoks, down to just 7,000 last we saw her, is now nowhere to be seen.