Good afternoon and welcome to the Amazon Room, the venue for today's restart.
After a rather tense Day 1b when it seemed possible that we could actually make the money without the need for a Day 2, in the event we finished up with a grand total of 481 Day 2 runners - just a little outside the money.
Indeed, only 441 of those players fortunate enough to make it this far will be getting paid. Players are at the tables and chips are being de-bagged and re-stacked even now, so play should be getting underway shortly.
Men "The Master" Nguyen is chipping up as we near the money bubble.
Facing a 2,400 chip raise from Lance Oliver in the cutoff, Nguyen three-bet to 12,700 in the big blind leaving just over 10,000 behind.
"Are you ready?" Oliver needled.
"I'm ready," Nguyen shot back.
After a few moments of deliberation Oliver released and Nguyen was shipped the pot. The Master offered to show if Oliver did as well, but Oliver's hand hit the muck face down.
One table particularly stands out today in terms of potential interesting shenanigans.
Table 328 currently boasts overall chip leader Braxton Dunaway, fellow giganto-stack Thomas Joanides, and a rather shorter-stacked but still dangerous Lee Markholt. We're crossing our blogging fingers for fireworks.
Elsewhere, Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Rousso is sharing a table with the equally fearsome Lisa Parsons. Rousso was involved in some sort of minor disagreement with a dealer concerning dealing procedure when we strolled by her table, so she's clearly on the ball this morning, but so far we haven't seen much action from either of these ladies. It's early days yet though.
Justin Marchand began the day with just 8,000 chips and is now busto.
When we reached the table, Marchand was all-in against an opponent on the button. The hands were tabled and looked like this:
Marchand:
Button:
The dealer fanned a fun flop of giving the player on the button a leading set and Marchand gut-shot straight and backdoor flush draws. Neither the nor the were any help to Marchand though and he hit the rail.
Nancy Matson, who had a crazy roller coaster of a Day 1, veering from chip leader to short stack and back to sort of average, has finally kicked the tournament bucket in the ugliest of ways.
A short raising war between Matson (early position) and Tai Nguyen (button) resulted in Matson moving all in and Nguyen calling. It was looking good for a Matson double up.
Amarillo Slim has been eliminated in a bit of a strange hand over at Table 366 in the Amazon Room.
Slim opened to 3,000 in the cutoff and the action folded to Nick Chlebeck in the small blind who re-raised to 8,500. Slim called, and the two saw a flop of .
Slim seemed anxious and, out of turn, starting pushing his chips towards the middle. Chlebeck saw this and elected to indeed put Slim all-in for 35,000. Slim called and the cards were tabled:
Chlebeck:
Slim:
Slim received no help on the turn or river and hit the rail. Chlebeck now sits with 92,000 chips.
![[user46392]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
giving the player on the button a leading set and Marchand gut-shot straight and backdoor flush draws. Neither the 
nor the 
were any help to Marchand though and he hit the rail.
... 
and Phan doubled to 17,000.
.