After seeing only one flop in the first 12 hands, the audience is starting to lose their enthusiam after watching everyone fold to the first pre-flop raiser.
"Are all of you waiting for aces or what?" shouted Mike 'The Mouth' Matusow from the stands.
At that point, TD Jack McClelland requested that a cocktail waitress come to the stage, hoping that some booze will loosen up the players.
Hand #13 - Tim Phan has the button in seat 6, Wattel raises to 550,000, and Laliberte calls from the big blind. The flop comes . Laliberte checks, Wattel bets 600,000, Laliberte raises to 1.6 million, and Wattel thinks for about two minutes before folding. Laliberte takes the first big pot of the day, worth 2.47 million.
Mike Wattel lost about 1.1M in the hand against Guy Laliberte, who won the biggest pot so far in the tournament. Wattel slipped to last place in chips with around 1.7M while Laliberte is now 3rd in chips behind Paul Lee and Carlos Mortensen.
Hand #14 - Kirk Morrison has the button in seat 1, Lee raises to 400,000, and Mortensen calls from the big blind. The flop comes , Mortensen checks, Lee bets 600,000, and Mortensen calls. The turn card is the , and both players check. The river card is the . Mortensen bets 2 million, and Lee folds. Mortensen takes the pot.
Hand #15 - Guy Laliberte has the button in seat 2, Lee raises under the gun to 300,000, and Laliberte calls from the button. The flop comes . Lee checks, Laliberte bets 600,000, and Lee folds. Laliberte takes the pot.
Hand #16 - Carlos Mortensen has the button in seat 3, and Wattel moves all in from the small blind. Lee folds his big blind, and Wattel takes the blinds and antes.
Paul Lee has loosened up a bit and saw two consecutive flops. He lost about 1 M in a pot against Carlos Mortensen and then lost another 300K to Laliberte on the next hand. He still has a shade over 10 million, but the pack is closing in.
Hand #17 - Mike Wattel has the button in seat 4, Mortensen raises from the cutoff to 300,000, Lee reraises from the small blind to 700,000, and Mortensen calls. The flop comes , and both players check. The turn card is the , and they check again. The river card is the , Lee bets 1 million, and after about three minutes, Mortensen folds. Lee takes the pot.
When Paul Lee bet 1M on the river on a board of , Carlos Mortensen sighed and looked at his chips. He wanted to call and gave Lee a look that said he knew he was bluffing. Alas, Mortensen didn't have a hand to call with and mucked.
"Felt like a bluff to me," mentioned WPT announcer Linda Johnson. "We'll have to see that hand on TV."
Hand #18 - Paul Lee has the button in seat 5, Laliberte raises under the gun to 500,000, and Phan moves all in for 1,092,000 from the small blind. After about 30 seconds of thinking, Laliberte calls.
Phan shows , dominating Laliberte's . The flop comes , and it creates the potential for a chopped pot. But the turn card is the , and Phan clinches the hand with a pair of kings. (The meaningless river card is the .)
During the first heads-up all in hand of the day between Tim Phan and Guy Laliberte, the crowd jumped to its feet in anticipation of a possible elimination. Phan's fans exploded when the fell on the turn. Aside from a few smart aleck remarks from Mike Matusow, the room had been relatively quiet.