Final Table, Here We Come
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It's been an amazingly long road from 22 players to nine, but what a journey it's been.
We lost two-time bracelet winner Greg Mueller right off the bat in 22nd place, followed by Thomas Bichon (20th), Phil Ivey (19th), Viktor Blom (16th), Barny Boatman (13th) and Arnaud Mattern (12th), among others. But when the final 10 players condensed on to a single table, they were still at an average 65 big blinds apiece, meaning that it took us a while to reach our official, nine-handed final. But it was worth the wait, because this is going to be fun:
Seat 1: Roland de Wolfe (1,377,000)
Seat 2: Marc Inizan (349,000)
Seat 3: Nicolas Levi (428,000)
Seat 4: Fabrizio Baldassari (697,000)
Seat 5: Brian Powell (842,000)
Seat 6: Danny Steinberg (1,520,000)
Seat 7: James Bord (1,331,000)
Seat 8: Ronald Lee (1,899,000)
Seat 9: Dan Fleyshman (1,946,000)
The blinds will be 10,000/20,000/3,000 when we reconvene at noon - with the average stack at 1.15 million, that's more than 57 big blinds apiece, meaning that we could well be in for another marathon final table - remember John Juanda in 2008, whose victory over Stanislav Alekhin didn't come until 11am the next day.
For the moment, though, our nine finalists get 13 hours of well-earned rest or drinking time, whichever floats their respective boats. We'll be back ringside tomorrow from noon, so join us back here then when we'll be bringing you all the action direct from the floor, without that pesky five-hour delay.
Until tomorrow then, goodnight from The Empire!