From the cutoff seat, Dmitry Motorov raised to 11,000. Alexander Roumeliotis called out of the small blind and the flop came down 
and both players checked. The turn brought the 
and Roumeliotis fired 17,500. Motorov folded and Roumeliotis won the pot.
When the table folded around to the blinds, Vladimir Shchemelev looked down at 
and shoved his last ~55,000 into the pot. The last man to get through, big blind Matt Waxman squeezed out 
, though, and he quickly made the call with a chance at the knockout.
Shchemelev drew a gutterball on the 
flop, and the on the turn added another set of outs as he now had the diamonds to sweat, as well. The river was the black 
, though, and Waxman superfluously improved to the full house to earn the knockout.
So then, it's Shchemelev out in 18th place, and the 17 who remain are now playing hand-for-hand on the direct bubble. The next man out gets nothing except the proverbial wooden spoon.
It was a bit of a cooler that found Jon Aguiar running his 
into the 
of Shawn Buchanan, but the last ~110,000 of Aguiar's chips found themselves in the middle with their owner drawing slim. He shut his iPad, gathered his things, and shifted his weight to stand up.
Some of the dealers, such as this one, deal the board cards one at a time, and this life-saving dealer burned and put the 
right in the window for Aguiar. The rest of the board ran out 
, and Buchanan has been forced to part with a good chunk of his own stack. The two men have similar stacks now, each with a bit over 200,000.
Another level is off and running, and we're two eliminations away from the money and the end of Day 2. It's one of the biggest bubbles in WSOPE history, though, so this might take a while.
Level: 17
Blinds: 2,500/5,000
Ante: 500
Some eye candy while you wait for the action to resume.
We and our 18 final players will return in 20 minutes.
"I really, really have to pee," Jason Mercier said a few minutes ago.
Jon Aguiar turned to Mercier and joked, "You might not want to say that. I might need to raise on the last hand and then tank for, like, six minutes." The two shared a laugh, but that exact scene just happened to play out. On the last hand.
As the last few minutes of the level ticked off, Aguiar opened to 8,000 from middle position, and Mercier asked to see his stack. Then he three-bet shoved. Both men had a bit over 125,000, but Mercier did have the covering stack by a small margin, and his move sent Aguiar deep into the tank. It had to be about six or seven minutes for Aguiar, and if he was just acting, he was doing a damn good job. He truly looked pained by the decision, but he eventually surrendered about three minutes into the break, folding with a frustrated flick.
It's break time.
We picked up the action on this hand with the board reading 
between Shawn Buchanan and Matt Waxman. After Waxman checked, Buchanan bet 21,000. Waxman check-raised to 47,500 and Buchanan called.
The river completed the board with the . With 84,500 behind, Waxman took a few moments and then checked. Buchanan mentioned possibly betting, but then said, "I don't want to valuetown myself," and checked behind.
Waxman turned over the , but lost to Buchanan's 
.
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