Pushing and Shoving
There has been quite a bit of early pushing and shoving but no one went broke in the last few hands witnessed.
In the first it was France's Julien Sitbon who had opened from the hijack with a min-raise to 10,000 with button Nakajima Takuto making the call before Michael Hahn squeezed to 56,000 from the big blind to take down the pot pre-flop.
The second saw a limp from Vincent Tay in middle position, with Matthew Barker (hijack) and Daniel Hope also coming along for the ride and Paul Issa (small blind) and Travis Endersby (big blind) coming along also to take the action multi-way to a flop of 
.
Issa moved all-in for 64,000 and found no customers, though Hope looked tempted and thought it over for a few seconds. Issa flashed him the 
after Hope mucked, leaving Issa to rake in the pot and climb to 84,000.
Over on table 9, there was a pre-flop raise to 15,000 from Peter Robertson from late position, with $5k Challenge finalist Marc Camphausen making the call from the big blind to take play heads-up to a flop of 
, which Camphausen took down with a lead of 22,000.
Over on the neighbouring table 8, Matthew Barker and Sosia Jiang were embroiled in a decent-sized pot with over 50,000 already in the middle and the community cards spread 
.
Barker had led out for 38,000 from the small blind and Jiang was in the tank, eventually moving all-in. Barker would be the man at-risk should be choose to call, and he eventually thought better of it, leaving Jiang free to scoop the pot and climb to 250,000 while barker dropped to 64,000.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
312,500 | 20,000 |
|
304,500 | 25,000 |
|
250,000 | 86,000 |
|
154,000 | -15,000 |
|
128,000 | -10,000 |
|
103,500 | -10,000 |
|
|
84,000 | -5,500 |
|
|
63,000 |