Jens Kyllonen is on life support at the moment, he just survived after pushing all-in for his last 3,525 on a flop to elicit a fold from his opponent to pick up a couple of thousand back.

He’s Finnish, but not finished.

Finnish TV presenter Jussi Heikela is our very first casualty today. He was all-in on the TV table with against with a predictably large amount of action both preflop and on a :Q: flop.

Heikela needed one of two bullets to avoid having his Golden Sands trip becoming the shortest in living memory, but the turn and river failed to help him out.

“Ahhh! I’m out!” said Heikela, stating the inevitable even though the tournament director had already announced the action to the entire room.

On the plus side, the sun has just come out and it looks to be a glorious day outside, so he won’t be bored!

What a perfect matchup for Claus Nielsen’s – a short stacked Rene Bjoern Larsen shoving in early position with and Tuomas Ketola moving in over the top for roughly double with after he’d made the call.

A King on the board surrounded by rags was the icing on the cake – he busted both players from the TV table and increased his stack back to the top spot!

Zdenek Habala was the first to bust in the money (earning a €2,070 mincash), when he moved all in with vs. the of Jeffrey Schuman.  He spiked straight away with the flop coming , but the turn and river were the fourflushing his opponent.

Also busting to a rivered flush is Mikhail Kladov, whose last shortstacked stand was with vs. Georgi Pleshkov’s (he had actually shoved first, being short too).  The flop brought two hearts, and the river a cruel .

Tero Salonen too made a last-ditch effort to double up with but ran smack into the Jacks of Anthon-Pieter Wink.

Down to 50 players, and falling…

Sami Saarelainen just faced a decision for his tournament life at the hands of Yves Van Lent, who moved all in on a flop when Saarelainen checked to him.  The pot was 18k, his stack 40k.  This bet would have put both players effectively all-in, but after diving into the tank for minutes (sit forward, sit back, exhale, run hands through hair), Saarelainen folded.

He threw his cards in the muck pretty hard, and one of them accidentally flipped over – the …

It looks like your new chip leader is young Andrei One, who’s quietly built a stack of 52k and towers over the other players at his table.  Meanwhile it’s all-change at the top as Mohammed Ben Ezzedine has lost about half his stack putting him on 22k.

Other selected counts:

Erik Dahl – 21,800
Daniel van Kalkenen – 24,000
Jussi Heikela – 14,000
Michal Wisniewski – 18,500

Wisniewski (pictured below), and trust me you’ll remember him once you’ve seen him) just doubled up to this stack racing his vs. .  He was standing up as the flop and turn came raggy, shouting during the pause that ensued, getting a full ring of press round his table, and then when the AK missed on the river as well he shouted, “YES!” before miming spitting into both palms and rubbing them together as if to say, “NOW let’s get down to business!”

You can tell when there are only minutes left until the start because the foyer starts playing loud music.  Yesterday it was T-Rex, today Blur.  Tomorrow Rage Against the Machine?

The fresh batch of players are mingling outside the tournament area, another sellout crowd waiting to take up every available seat in the spacious Las Vegas Casino (or Convention centre).  We have a larger Dutch contingent coming in today, including but not limited to:

Horace Cohen
Ruben van der Meer
Tim van de Riet
Marco Adams
Paul Valkenburg
Daniel van Kalkeren
Huub Verdonschot

We’ve also got 2009’s Unibet Open Prague winner Fuat Can in the lineup, as well as a few others we’ve seen before – Imre Leibold, Kim Herold, Nicolas Dervaux and Branimir Brunovic.