With the board reading , Stephane Albertini checked to Claudius Secara, who bet 280,000.
Albertini thought long and he thought hard, and eventually he called - and it was a good call. Albertini's pocket fives were good to beat Secara's for a flopped straight draw that came to nothing, and Albertini took the pot.
If you'd like to see the action unfold with your very own eyes, thanks to the wonders of technology you can do exactly that!
Heading over to EPT Live will make you feel like you're in the Casino Barriere, although we daresay the temperature in our readers' respective homes is rather more comfortable than the sweltering tournament area...
As if to make up for yesterday's marathon session, we look (touch wood!) set for an early night tonight.
Down to nine players, they're all moving on to a single table. Eight of the remaining runners will go through to the Final Table; the other one player will take home a wooden spoon worth exactly €51,500.
Seat 1: Claudius "The Artist Formerly Known As George*" Secara - 1,545,000
Seat 2: Jake Cody - 4,510,000
Seat 3: Michael Fratty - 1,590,000
Seat 4: Teodor Caraba - 5,090,000
Seat 5: Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier - 1,100,000
Seat 6: Peter Eastgate - 310,000
Seat 7: Craig Bergeron - 4,175,000
Seat 8: Stephane Albertini - 2,950,000
Seat 9: Mike "Timex" McDonald - 1,720,000
*He's down as George Secara, but it turns out he is actually Claudius. Apologies, Mr. Secara.
With the last elimination, the field has been trimmed down to the final nine players. They have broken the secondary table, and they'll all reconvene on stage in just a few minutes at the last table left standing.
When they come back, we'll play on for one more elimination before calling it a night.
Alexia Portal was down right around 450,000 chips, and her preflop options are duly limited. As such, she peeked down at and got it in there with her Broadway cards. Stephane Albertini took his time stacking out the amount and eyeballing his remaining stack before calling to put Ms. Portal at risk.
Showdown
Portal:
Albertini:
The dealer would fail to provide any salvation for the at-risk Frenchwoman. A board of will be the last five cards she sees today, relegated to the rail in 10th place. She'll receive a pay bump up to €51,500 for her fine work here this week.
During the last break, Glo caught up with Alexia to have a quick chat. As a parting gift to her fans, check out what she had to say before she was so rudely forced to leave:
George Secara opened to 115,000 in the cutoff seat, and Stephane Albertini made the call in the next seat over. Action came to Craig Bergeron in the small blind, and he wanted to play for more. "Three ninety-five all day," he announced as he cut the chips into the pot. Secara sighed heavily and shook his head, but he didn't take much longer than that to make the call. Albertini decided folding was his best course of action, and he let the two go heads up the rest of the way.
A flop of appeared on board, and Bergeron was definitely betting. It was small, though -- just a leverage-y 295,000. Secara shrugged and called rather quickly again, and the hit fourth street. After pausing for a moment like a statue, Bergeron stacked together 390,000 chips and fired another slug. Secara delayed for a bit this time, and then he released his cards into the muck, sending a big pot over to the already-massively-stacked Craig Bergeron.
He's up close to 4.3 million now and his chip lead is just that much more secure.
We're back with the final 10 players and the blinds at a rather significant 25,000/50,000 with an ante of 5,000 apiece. Play on, lady and gents.
The EPT Live crew is hard at work providing multi-lingual commentary for today's action. Check out their feed if you want to see what we're talking about here.