A preflop threeway all in tripled the short stack and kept the last three tables (as they now are) all in the game.  The money went in quickest from shortest stacked Anthon-Pieter Wink, who had picked up the when all it could win for him was a short stack back, however two players came along for the ride, Egmonts Grzibovskis, with and Patrick Bousquie with .  The flop brought a King, giving the second shortest stack the side pot, and leaving Bousquie short.

He duly shoved the next hand with (with 82k, though) and was quickly called by Christian Kall with which held to bust him in 27th – prize: €4,209.

Erik Dahl, whose own fortunes aren’t huge at the moment, still had enough chips to bust Nicolas Dervaux, who’d made a good effort to keep alive all the way to level Eight.  He’d never had a huge stack, but had picked spots and stayed alive – until now.  I don’t know whether it went in preflop or on the flop, but either way he had at one point been very much ahead.

Dervaux: 
Dahl (pictured)

The nut flush draw was what got there on the river, and a wry smile from Dahl was all there was to show what had happend as Dervaux wished the table good luck and made his exit.

Two shortstacked French players just put their tournament lives on the line at the exact same moment on different tables.  The first was rather more talkative – Thierry Bolleret who was busy chatting to the only potential caller of his preflop shove when I arrived – when he folded Bolleret asked, “What did you have?” to which he was told, “A pair.”

“Aheheheheh!” gleefully giggled Bolleret – “Me too!” Proudly he flipped , only to be shown which set him off once more.  Just then mid-stack he leapt out of his seat to run across the room to the side of the table where Nicolas Dervaux (pictured) was all in with a larger pair vs. pair matchup – his Queens against Jacks.  They held, and gave him a little breathing room with a stack of 8,700.

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.

Guillaume Bacri might not be limping Aces UTG for a while after this hand. He had done so and was up against Jan Sjavik on a flop of . All the money went in with Bacri showing but his trappy little trap had found that it was the owner himself who had become trapped, Sjavik flipped over the ugly looking for two pair and the turn made a house so small it would probably only be a bungalow. The on the river confused the dealer who almost began to give the chips to Bacri before realising his mistake.

Sjavik is up to 40,000 while Bacri drops to just 10,000 as a result.

Peter Jan Deraedt – 54,000
Vaidotas Zukauskis – 30,000
Mikael Johansson – 80,000
Yordan Mitrentsov – 38,000
Sonja Kovac – 7,250
Zdenek Habala – 10,600
Kenneth Svensson – 14,000
Konstantin Tsonev – 31,000
Christen Jacobsen – 31,200
Marine Jouiallec – 37,000

Frenchwoman Marine Jouiallec has managed a remarkable comeback after being down to just a couple of thousand in the last hour or so. She raised to 1,650 from the button (blinds 200/400/50) and the small blind replied with a reraise to 5,000. Jouiallec shrugged after a moments’ thought and moved all-in, quickly being called.

Jouiallec: 8-8
Small Blind: K-Q

As the board rolled out the small blind shouted, “Down a king!” at every opportunity but the dealer would not help him out.

Jouiallec is up to 22,500.