It's Moving Day
Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the largest tournament this country has ever seen! It's the Season 7 edition of the PokerStars.com EPT London, and it's been a record setting, pro-heavy couple days to get us from the 848 starters down to the last 128. The bubble burst late last night, and those who still had chips left to bag are all guaranteed a payday upon their exits.
Whenever that may be. We've still got three full days of poker to play, and it's going to be a battle to accumulate chips and dodge elimination from here forward.
That chip accumulation thing has gone awfully well for David Vamplew so far. He's got the big stack here near the midway point, and his count of well over a million chips gives him a significant percentage of the chips in play. He's trailed by Steven Levy, and the Skype-emo-smiley-lookalike Benny Spindler is in a familiar spot in the top five as well. This is the second straight year that Spindler finds himself with heaps of chips running deep at EPT London. His run took him all the way to 12th place last year, and he'll be looking to do about 11 spots better than that this time around.
Phil Ivey's still alive with plenty of chips to do some damage, as are a host of other bracelet winners like JP Kelly, Chance Kornuth, Daniel Negreanu, Marty Smtyh, Chris Bjorin, Alex Kravchenko, and former WSOP World Champions Joe Hachem and Greg Raymer, as well as 2008 WSOPE Main Event winner John Juanda. There's also one guy left who has a shot at the 2010 WSOP Main Event bracelet; November Niner John Dolan begins the day with just under 100,000 chips.
It's going to be a good one today, and we're just about 15 minutes from getting rolling. Grab yourself a spot of tea and something to munch on, and we'll be right back when the cards go flying.