A commotion came from a nearby table as a player pushed over his chair in disgust. We hurry over to the table to see Tim Chocklett stacking chips with two players gathering their things. The board was . The first player eliminated had the worst of the three hands despite having the best possible preflop hand with his . The second player eliminated had flopped the nuts with but Chocklett outdrew both of them with his that turned into a full house on the turn.
Chocklett was up to 130,000 after the hand and the tournament is now down to 73 players.
We got to the table with a huge pot brewing between Alex Yen and Robert Pound on a flop of . All the chips went into the middle and it was Pound at risk with his against Yen who had flopped a set with his . Pound would retake the lead on the turn to give him the nut flush. The river would change all that, however, as it was the pairing the board and giving Yen a full house.
Pound, who had surged to the chip lead early with over five times the starting stack, quickly grabbed his things and exited the room, a look of shock and disbelief on his face.
Yen could only smile as he stacked the massive pot.
There was a total of 207 entrants creating a prize pool of $207,000. This mark eclipsed the previous Regional Main Event record of $202,754 for the HPO at Hollywood Columbus earlier this year. A total of 27 players will get paid with first place taking home $49,676.
It appears the final number of entrants was 207 giving us an unofficial prize pool of $207,000. There are 108 remaining meaning we've lost about half the field. The average stack is just under 40,000 in chips or nearly 80 big blinds proving what a great structure they have here for the HPO Regional Main Events.
Registration is now closed and players are back from dinner break. Once we have the official prize pool and payout information available to us, we'll post it here.
The tournament topped the 200-entrant mark a short while ago as the tournament clock is showing 205 entrants. Players are now on a 60-minute dinner break and registration/reentry will be open until the end of the break. We'll be back to provide you the end of the night coverage at approximately 7:45 p.m. local time.
We came across a player sitting with approximately 155,000 in chips which is the clear chip lead at this stage as we are a few minutes from the dinner break. We asked for his name but he shook his head and muttered "I'm playing poker."
If he still has chips at the end of the night we'll let you know what his name is. For now, we'll just call him the chip leader.
He would come back at the end of the dinner break to give us his name — it's T.M. Williams.
![[user272102]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
. The first player eliminated had the worst of the three hands despite having the best possible preflop hand with his 
but Chocklett outdrew both of them with his 
. All the chips went into the middle and it was Pound at risk with his 
against Yen who had flopped a set with his 
. Pound would retake the lead on the 
turn to give him the nut flush. The river would change all that, however, as it was the 
pairing the board and giving Yen a full house.
