Still they keep falling at an incredible rate. The blinds and antes are very steep now, forcing many short stacks to commit. The big stack vultures are picking them off in merciless fashion.
Andreas Hoivold looks a little resigned to his fate. The Dortmund champion is really struggling right now. With 12000 chips and the blinds on 1000/2000 there isn't much time left for the big Norwegian.
Russell just picked up two small pots to keep his head above water. His girlfriend is supporting him from the rail. She tells me he's been playing for only two years but he is already a regular on the WPT circuit.
Russell also finished 23rd in the the 2007 Aussie Millions
One of the leaders at the start of today, we hear that Peter Willers Jepsen took a calculated gamble to get up to around 200k after Thomas Mathieson pushed his large stack all-in over Jepsen's re-raise. Holding AK, Jepsen must have feared the worst but decided to call for his tournament. We understand that Mathieson was caught with his pants down metaphorically speaking and Jepsen doubled through big-time.
Nikolas Liakos of Sweden just doubled through against a very big stack swiftly overtaking him in the process.
With 4,000 in antes and blinds already in the middle, a raise was met by a reraise all-in from Liakos. The big stack pondered for not very long and called, presumably feeling protected by his chipcount. Nonetheless, if he lost, he will have effectively halved his chips.
He did call and Liakos showed . The caller turned over .
The flop gave him hope as it was . The turn was the and the river a harmless for Liakos.
Nikolas Liakos is now in contention.
On the same table, Andreas Hoivold is sucking air with 15k. It's all-in or bust very soon for Andreas with the blinds and antes about to cost a small fortune per round in level 13.
After the first two hours of play the press office is buzzing. We've lost almost half of the field so far. You'd think they had all left the iron on at home!