2008 Partouche Poker Tour - Cannes

Stephane Bazin comes in first with a limp from the button. Claudio Rinaldi folds the small blind, and Antonin Tesseire knocks the table, content to see a free flop from the big.

The first three community cards come . Tesseire leads out with 180,000 chips, which Bazin quickly calls.

Fourth street is the and both players check quickly.

The river brings the , pairing the high card on the board. Tesseire checks, letting Bazin put out a bet. Once he does, Tesseire quickly calls, and turns over . It's the winner, as Bazin mucks his hand and the pot is pushed to his opponent.

Claudio Rinaldi just took down a four way limped pot with a pair of sixes.

Stephane Bazin limped in from the cutoff as did Rinaldi from the button. Antonin Tesseire completed the bet from the small blind and Alain Roy checked his option in the big.

The flop came and the action checked around the table to Rinaldi who made it 150,000 to go. Alain Roy was the lone caller and he and Rinaldi saw the fall on the turn.

Both players opted to check the turn and see a free river -- the . Another check-check sequence led to a showdown, at which time Roy showed - X for a pair of twos. Rinaldi then revealed a pocket pair of sixes which were good enough to take down the pot.

It's folded around to Alain Roy on the button who raises to 235,000 before Stephane Bazin reraises to 625,000 from the big blind. Roy tanks but eventually ends up folding. Bazin yells in delight and lifts up his holding of to the crowd. It enables Bazin to retake the lead.

After many long hours of minimal action, we've just seen two eliminations within ten minutes of each other.

The action started with a raise from Claudio Rinaldi who made it 225,000 to go. Action then folded around the table to Jean Philippe Rohr who re-raised all in. Rinaldi made the call holding and found himself slightly ahead of Rohr's .

The flop came giving Rinaldi top pair and the fell on the turn leaving Rohr drawing dead.

Rohr will walk away with an impressive $175,477 in prize money for his efforts. Meanwhile, Rinaldi now sits with just over 2.1 million in chips.

It's folded around to [Removed:133] on the button who open shoves for just under 500,000. In the next seat sits our chip leader, Stephane Bazin, who makes a quick call holding . Cournut is in a dominated situation holding and will need help to survive.

The board filled out giving Bazin a king-high straight and the pot.

Cournut wished everyone luck before exiting the tournament area, our second casualty of the day.

The players have returned from break and the cards are back in the air.

The average chip stack is now 1,371,428, meaning that the average player has ~17 big blinds. The pace of play could potentially speed up now that the blinds are getting higher, proportionately to the average stack size. We've got our fingers crossed, as things have been slow thus far.

Here's how the remaining seven players stack up heading into the 29th level of play:

Stephane Bazin: 2,298,000
Alain Roy: 2,155,000
Claudio Rinaldi: 1,298,000
Philippe Narboni: 1,245,000
Antonin Tesseire: 1,156,000
Jean Philippe Rohr: 877,000
[Removed:133]: 494,000

The clock has been paused, and the players are taking a 1-hour dinner break. Join us once again at 10:15pm local time as we resume play.

In late position, [Removed:133] opened with a minimum raise to 120,000. Next to act was Stephane Bazin, and he reraised to 450,000, prompting a fold from Cournut.