That's it for the night - with 10 minutes still on the clock the chip baggies made their first appearance at the $2,500 Omaha/Stud Hi-Lo 8-or-better. For want of a more accurate set of counts, I will pronounce Shirley Rosario as contender at least for chip lead and suggest you rejoin me tomorrow at 2pm should you wish to continue following this thrilling WSOP mixed-game adventure.
Here's our probably final chip harvest of the day. Full counts will materialise before restart tomorrow.
In the giddy heights:
Shirley Rosario - 38,500
Chad Brown - 35,000
Thomas Bihl - 33,000
Jon Turner - 31,000
Steve Wong - 30,000
Daniel Nicewander - 29,000
Jeff Duvall - 25,000
Carol Kline - 25,000
Mel Judah - 23,000
In the middle
Eric Buchman - 16,500
Linda Wagner - 15,500
Gavin Smith - 12,400
Jason Mercier - 11,000
In danger
Phil Ivey - 8,000
Annie Duke - 5,500
Jan Sjavik - 3,000
This has to go to Chad Brown. Early rumours of his retiring were substantiated by his chip stack just kind of sitting there without him for quite a while earlier. But suffering or not, Mr. Brown has returned and built his chip stack up to 34k and that's some achievement.
No, I didn't miss an apostrophe - table mates Dario Alioto and Dario Minieri both had a bad level. First off Alioto gave up a 15k pot to a river bet on a board (he was small blind vs. big blind and I wish I knew how such a pot grew).
But Dario Minieri's in much worse shape - in fact he's out, having reached the Red Alert of under 3k.
Just prior to his busting (in fact I think it was the hand before) he did win a few chips, getting it all in preflop in Omaha hi-low with in the small blind vs. utg's .
"Low cards!" commanded Minieri.
"High cards!" came the reply.
Flop: (One got their wish)
Turn:
River:
"You got there," laughed his opponent as Minieri took his half of the pot.
His exit hand was a Stud 8-or-better one, and I have only two details - one, that he was eliminated in a double bustout to Jon Turner, and two, his hand ended up as (in no particular order) vs. Turner's .
And not in the way that I've had the same sneakers for three years...
Heads up with Justin Young, John Cernuto bet a flop, which Young check-called. The same thing happened on the turn. However, on the river, Young switched to betting out. After a short while, Cernuto mucked his hand face up - no good...?
Big blind Todd Brunson bet out all the way (not sure about the flop, actually) until the board read . Diamond-heavy or not, his bet on the river secured him both halves of the pot as his turned out to be good.
It occurs to me sometimes that poker terminology might be well-nigh incomprehensible to the casual reader. I apologise if there are any of those at the minute - the title of this post is a case in point. It looks like what came out when we put the Dutch Pokernews through babelfish...
Allen Kessler is no more. After lingering about as shortstacked as it is possible to be for a whole level, he got it all in three times - once in Stud and twice preflop in Omaha. This being a hi-low split game, he won at least half of the first two pots, but the final time his failed to hit against . The most vocal participant on a table which includes Dario Minieri thus exits the tournament area.