Halfway through the last level, and we have 228 of our Day 1b players still vying to make it to Day 2.
The one with the biggest stack at the moment appears to be Thomas Jonides, whose 110,000 looks to make him the only player in six figures at present.
Wandering past Zak Gilbert's table, we couldn't help but notice that Mr. Gilbert was in possession of exactly zero chips, and we thus surmise that last year's stud hi/lo finalist is busto.
Some very vocal celebrations alerted us to the fact that Robert "E-Dolo" Scott had knocked out another player. Scott's 
had come good against his hapless opponent's 
when the board came down 
for a runner-runner straight.
"Woo!" said Scott. Across the room T. J. "Who Let The Dogs Out" Boytor returned the call. "Woo! I'm not the only redneck in the house!" The only person not amused was the poor gent with the jacks.
Scott picked up the nice 20,000-chip pot and is now perched on 28,000.
As we begin the last scheduled level of the evening, we have 254 left from today's starting field -- 89 away from the money. We lost 78 that last level, so the rate of attrition has slowed a bit (after losing 115 in Level 7 and 108 in Level 8). So it looks like we might not quite get to that 165-player mark by the end of Level 10 after all.
Anything can happen, though. I mean, none of us really expected to be hearing "Who Let the Dogs Out?" here in 2010.
Level: 10
Blinds: 400/800
Ante: 100
We have no further need of the 25-denomination chips in this tournament, so there will now be a short break while they are carted off to a back room somewhere and replaced with larger denominations.
A bunch of people were standing around a table in a someone's-all-in sort of way - but what really drew our attention was the fact that two of the onlookers were tournament directors.
It turned out that there was a three-way all in showdown, of which we managed to catch the tail end. The cards looked like so:
Board: 
Player 1: 
for a pair of aces
Player 2: 
for a pair of jacks
Player 3, soon to be identified as one Barret Y. Fujita: for a set
Fujita tripled up to 8,500, Player 1 who had also been all in received just the 1,200 side pot, and Player 2 who was a rather larger stack just took the small hit quietly.
What really made this interesting, though, is that as soon as Fujita had raked in the pot, he was issued with a 10-hand penalty for exposing his hand while there were still people to act. He strolled off, presumably wondering how much of his stack will remain when he is readmitted to the game.
T.J. Boytor has vaulted up the chip counts, thanks in large part to a huge three-way all-in just now in which Boytor held 
, one opponent had 
, and the other 
. The board came 
, giving Boytor the 45,000-chip pot.
After winning the hand, Boytor couldn't resist launching into an enthusiastic rendition of the Baha Men classic, "Who Let the Dogs Out?", accompanying his performance with an impromptu bit of interpretive dance.
The floor was not amused. "The redneck gotta come out every once in a while!" explained Boytor. "I couldn't catch nothing for an hour-and-a-half."
Having satisfied his need for self-expression, Boytor took his seat and began stacking his 65,000 chips.
A player in middle position opened for 1,700, and Paul Davidson reraised from late position to 4,200. It folded back to the raiser who shoved all in for 18,200 total, and Davidson made the call.
Davidson showed 
, while his opponent tabled 
. The board went 
, and Davidson tumbles a bit to 47,000.
There was a board reading 
out and 10,000 in the pot by the time we arrived to see the river being dealt. It was the 
.
Tim Koester in the small blind position checked, and then called 3,000 from Shane Campbell on the button. "Straight," announced Koester and promptly turned over pocket threes. Campbell mucked, and the former big stack is down to 10,000. Koester however is sitting pretty on 47,000.
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