Threeway to a flop of , and big blind Jason Mercier thought for a while before leading out 64k into Daniel Negreanu and Antoine Saout. Negreanu called quickly, Saout folded slowly.
The turn brought the and a bet of 129k from Mercier. Nereanu counted out one of his comparatively diminutive stacks, did some cut'n'thread type chip fiddling, briefly appeared to stick his tongue out at the unfazed Mercer and ultimately announced all in!
Call - and fast - and not surprising as the turn had just created a set-over-set situation:
Mercier:
Negreanu:
The river failed to upset the status quo with a one-outer (it was the ) and Negreanu gets the full double up to 1,315,000, while Mercier will have to make do with 2,475,000.
Players are back at the felt. That last hand, by the way, put Negreanu up to second place in chips -- although second, third (Akenhead - 1,352,000) and fourth (Shulman - 1,262,000) places are very close.
James Akenhead raised in early position, and Jason Mercier reraised from the button, his excellent Eighties white-rimmed sunglasses back on now and making him look like a very clean robot. Back to Akenhead, and eventually he gave it up to the Merciertron.
Daniel Negreanu raises to 56k preflop, only to find Chris Bjorin (who's taken his early place as short stack) moving all-in for 397k. Negreanu makes the call and their hands are on their backs!
Bjorin:
Negreanu:
The board emerges: ... ... meaning that Bjorin evens up their stacks to 800k and 900k respectively.
It folded to Markus Ristola in the cutoff, and he raised to 62,000; big blind Daniel Negreanu made the call and they went heads up to a flop, which they checked.
The turn was the and they checked that too, and ended up looking at a river. Negreanu bet out an experimental 95,000, and without a second though Ristola passed, putting Negreanu back above the million mark on 1,018,000.
Jason Mercier raises preflop, picking up one caller in small blind Daniel Negreanu. They see a flop of ; Negreanu checks to Mercier...who bets 64k. Out comes a raise sharpish from Negreanu, 110k - enough to see off the most aggressive player of the final so far, from this pot at least.
Nevertheless, next hand he's at it again, raising preflop to 64k and picking up some chunky 12k/24k blinds, replastering the small crack made in his stack by Kid Poker...
Jason Mercier raised under the gun and the action folded to James Akenhead, who looked concerned yet purposeful; he reraised to 175,000. Back to Mercier who folded apparently without any difficulty, and the pot went to Akenhead.
Markus Ristola raised to 63k preflop just now, called by Matt Hawrilenko, and Jason Mercier.
The flop: . No further betting led to the coming out on the turn... and again no bet from any of them.
On the river, it's Mercier who took the first stab at the pot, but got a call from Hawrilenko. He showed down the , which turned out to be good, though.