Daniel Negreanu was overheard asking people in the break whether there was anywhere in the vicinity where he could get some food. Of course there is food available in the casino - we up in the media section are absolutely loving the €3 cheese toasties - but things are rather more difficult, it turns out, if you insist on not eating any meat or dairy at all.
So Mr. Negreanu has just now taken delivery of one of the saddest looking lunches we have ever seen - a plain and undressed collection of green vegetables and raw onion slices containing admittedly some vitamins, but no actual sustenance as far as we can see. We hope that he manages to find the excellent and relatively vegan-friendly Indian restaurant down by the marina when the tournament is over tonight, else he may waste away before the week is out.
Many thanks to our roving reporter Arnaud Mattern, who found out what happened to his fellow Frenchman and Team PokerStars Pro Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier through the mystical medium of the text message.
It turns out that ElkY had made a couple big folds - among them, he folded a set against what we believe was a flush - and so he was down to around 15,000 when William Thorson opened for 725 in mid position during the 150/300 level. There was one call before ElkY squeezed to 2,500 with . Thorson made it 8,000, ElkY got the whole lot in, and Thorson's spiked to send ElkY back out into the sunshine where his aviators serve an actual purpose.
For the rest of the week, though, life is indeed a beach for Grospellier.
By that we merely mean that short stacked Mohamad Kowssarie picked a bad moment to move in preflop from the big blind after early position William Thorson had made it 800 and got a bit of interest from some late-position callers. He was down to around a third of his starting stack and received a call so fast it was invisible - Thorson showed and was up against a timing-bad . As if in speed-sympathy the dealer had the whole raggy board out and swept back in a flash, and another small stack was added to Thorson's rapidly growing one.
It's time to head outside for 15 lovely happy glorious minutes - or stay inside and type up chip counts, whatever floats your boat. We bet it would be really nice to be on a boat right now, in this blazing sun. That would be amazing. But we digress.
Chip leader right now seems to be Sorel Mizzi on around 100,000. Hopefully we'll be able to track him down and find out how that happened. Back soon.
The first tables have started to break and scatter their players to the four corners of the room (and some further - to the bar or beach). Kristijonas Andrulis has been moved to the early chip leader Jonathan Weekes' immediate left, and that table is looking fairly formidable all round. Just now Andrulis raised to 700 in early position and picked up Tom Marchese on the button and both blinds to a flop of . Everyone checked to the button, and Marchese bet 1,250. Only Andrulis remained, and after a chip twiddly minute he raised to 3,200. Back to Marchese, and they seemed to engage in a think-off, with Marchese making the call but backing down and passing on the turn when Andrulis bet out 4k, just under half his remaining chips.