With a couple knockouts in quick succession, we're down to our final 27 players. There was a quick five-minute break to redraw our final three tables, everyone played a quick game of musical chairs, and the cards have gone back into the air once again.
The new seating draw shall be here momentarily. Or, up there actually. You'll see it.
Under the gun, Demis Hassabis open-shoved all in for his last 25,700 chips. Kumal Choraria called all in a few seats over, putting his last ~16,000 in the middle. Big-stacked big blind Paul Pitchford considred calling both men down, but he eventually flashed pocket eights and sent them into the muck. That meant Choraria was heads-up for a double up, but he was well behind as the cards were turned over:
Hassabis:
Choraria:
The board changed nothing as it came to seal Choraria's fate. He's out in 28th place, leaving us with just three tables full of players.
Anton Wigg opened preflop to 4,700 before Karim Jomeen reraised all-in for a sizeable amount.
Wigg, the former EPT Copenhagen winner debated for several minutes before eventually bring out the coinflip application on his iPhone. Tails came up and Wigg mucked his hand and the Swede sighed, "Ahhhh, I so wanted to call there!"
Xiang Tan has been building quite well today and just won another pot over on his table to push his stack to over 100,000 after taking a pot off Jeppe Bisgaard.
On the flop of , Bisgaard went to bet 7,600, but slid out 5,00 first, then 2,600. The 2,600 wasn't allowed to be bet and pushed back by the dealer. Tan then raised to 10,000, the minimum amount. Bisgaard folded and Tan showed the .
Under the gun, James Tomlin opened to 5,500, and the table folded around to the blinds. In the small, Wesley Pantling announced a reraise to 11,000 straight only to see big blind Tim Blake shove all in for just less than 60,000 right back over the top. Pantling didn't like it, but he made the call to put both men at risk.
Showdown
Tomlin:
Pantling:
Blake:
Pantling, in the middle of a rather vigorous head massage, could only frown and roll his eyes at the predicament he'd gotten himself into. Things would improve a bit for him, however. The board came down (one-out bink!) , giving Tomlin the main pot and Pantling the rest.
Tomlin is all the way up to 61,800 after that triple up, and Panting gets to take the other ~35,000 of Blake's chips with his rallying pair of aces. Despite shipping a double up over to Tomlin, Pantling makes out in the exchange as well. He's up to 112,000, and the only loser in this three-way battle is the now-extinct Tim Blake.
Checking in on JP Kelly's title defense, we see that he's dropped a tiny bit from our last count of 90,000 to about 72,000. That's still above the average of 60,200 right now, but not by much. At any rate, there's only 28 left standing between Kelly and back-to-back gold bracelets in this £1,075 No-Limit Hold'em event at the WSOP Europe.
In another blind-versus-blind better, Xiang Tan and Stephen Chidwick created a pot worth about 20,000 on a board of . Tan fired 10,000 on the river and after minute in the tank, Chidwick mucked and dropped to 77,000. Tan moved to about 93,000 in chips.