Ilari Sahamies is now enjoying a stint at one of the televised tables - although one tucked away in a side room - and has 46,000. While I was counting some of the stacks in there, a nice lady arrived with Boots cold and flu remedy for the poorly Finn.
"Stuck, tired, and he has a cold, tough..." sympathised Terrence Chan. I think.
TV Table 2:
Seat 1: David Williams - 47,200
Seat 2: Ilari Sahamies - 46,000
Seat 3: Dennis Phillips - 55,800
Seat 4: Not Sure - 10,650
Seat 5: Noah Boeken - 54,000
Seat 6: Alex Keating - 27,000
Seat 7: Terrence Chan - 54,000
Seat 8: Freddy Deeb - 75,300
Seat 9: Only got back of head - Joe Cassidy?
A 20k pot just drifted from Robert Williamson III after he called a turn bet and 5k on the river with the board reading . The final five thousand dropped him down to below 20k it looks like (sadly he's facing away from the rail) as he mucked his hand on seeing his opponent's .
One table which has had at least a similar lineup since the start of the day has experienced that phenomenon of one player's stack magnetically attracting chips, to the obvious detriment of all other stacks. Antoine Saout, the French dark horse of the WSOP Main Event Final table, is the player with that stack.
It's now up to 88,000 and it's shadow is cast over, for example, Nik Persaud's 31,600 or Antonio Esfandiari's 15,300 or Brandon Adams' 12,500. The quiet Frenchman is definitely one to watch in this tournament, despite being relatively new on the poker circuit.
Michael Binger just dropped a chunk of his stack to one of the day's most consistent chip accumulators: Andrew Lichtenberger. Binger had gotten into the position where, raising on the button (re-raising, in all probability - the bet in front of him was 3,100) he faced a justovermin raise from big blind Andrew Lichtenberger.
He stared at the 6,600 in front of his young opponent and after about a minute made the call.
The flop came down and nothing happened for a while. Then Lichtenberger bet out 5,700. More nothing - in fact it looked like they were playing that 'sleeping lions' thing you do at preschool where you have to hold as still as possible or you're out.
Eventually Binger moved - enough to make the flop call. On the turn, there was another pause-bet combo from Lichtenberger - this time 9,100 - enough to pretty much put Binger to the test for the lot. He thought about it with a bit more emotion this time, even a little shaking of the head before he laid his hand down.
Back in the game for the PLO Champ Jani Vilmunen. Down to around 10k at the start of the hand, the majority of the pot was generated on a flop which Vilmunen bet out at for 3,200, only to be raised by button Sorel Mizzi to 8,200 (effectively putting him all in).
He didn't think overly long before actually setting himself in for a negligible amount more - Mizzi called but looked rather disappointed that his draw ( ) was in poor shape against Vilmunen's . The turn and river bricked, and Vilmunen nearly has his starting stack again. Meanwhile Mizzi is now the one who's going to have to worry about getting a double up sometime in the next two levels.
With an aggressive Praz Bansi opening for 1,100, Mike McDonald pushed over the top for a total of 4,500 with pocket deuces. Roberto Romanello, however, was lying in wait with those gun-sling cowboys, which remained saddled on a deuceless board.