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.
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.
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.
Team Pokerstars Pro Salvatore Bonavena (the first and only Italian to win an EPT) has just been knocked out after pushing with for his last 2,250 but getting called by Florian Bubmann's which won out on a board.
William Thorson fired 850 on a flop of but was check-called by Luca Cainelli. Both players checked the turn before Cainelli bet 1,500 on the river.
Thorson sighed, "A-9?" and looked annoyed as he finally made the call. Cainelli looked uncomfortable and upset as he was forced to turn over but the Swede simply mucked upon seeing 3rd pair saying, "The best is when you bluff and still win when they call..."