The chips have been gravitating into Maksim Tyurin’s stack slowly but surely today, and he’s been the first over the million mark.  Just now he lost a pot to Anthon-Pieter Wink, who called his bet on a flop but bet the river (the turn was checked) after the and had appeared.  Tyurin thought about the 95k bet on the end, but eventually passed.  However he picked some right back up from Claus Nielsen, and stole a couple of blinds in the last orbit and a half so is still comfortably ahead.

Rough chip counts:

Seat 1: Nils Ral (Belgium) – 430,000
Seat 3: Zsombor Gall (Hungary) – 390,000
Seat 4: Danny Dabbagh (Denmark) – 435,000
Seat 5: Peder Skaj (Sweden) – 490,000
Seat 7: Claus Bek Nielsen (Denmark) – 400,000
Seat 8: Maksim Tyurin (Russia) – 1,100,000
Seat 9: Anthon-Pieter Wink (Holland) – 700,000
Seat 10: Joachim Buch (Norway) – 3500,000

I don’t think I’ve ever written those two words next to each other before.  Button Claus Bek Nielsen raised to 30k preflop (the blinds at 6k/12k ante 1k) and after an intense peer at something at table height (Nielsen’s stack?  The dealer button?) small blind Maksim Tyurin called.  Then big blind Anthon-Pieter Wink (pictured) reached for a few more – it looked like 105k in total from where I was in the spectator stands.  Both other players folded and it was game on.

There’s definite wrangling for chips going on here, but it’s all preflop at the moment and it would be very interesting to see who’s had the goods and who hasn’t.  The middle part of the level belonged to Maksim Tyurin, whose raise to 80k over the top of Kall’s open (24k) won him some chips and a table tap-fold from Kall, and then the next hand against Nils Ral won him another 50k:

Tyurin raised to 24k this time, and button Nils Ral made it 48k.  Back to Tyurin who took a pretty long time to think about it before he pushed in 130k and received a very fast fold, the only fast decision made in this hand.

Players are taking their time here, which is understandable – plus they have the luxury of being really deepstacked for a final table and the first hour’s blinds are 5k/10k as they were last night.

The two cards I was talking about were both Aces – one was in the hand of button raiser Danny Dabbagh (the ) and one in the hand of smallblind shover Christian Kall (the ) – Dabbagh decided not to call his all-in move, but we got to see a glimpse of their hands…

Just as the blinds increased to a chunky 5k/10k, Petar Zografov moved his stack in under the gun with for 106k total.  It folded round to the big blind Maksim Tyurin, who thought about it for a while before deciding to call off what was actually only about a sixth of his chips with .

The rail for Zografov shouted, “King-ball!” but it was not to be – the board brought only one pair for either and it was a Six.  He shrugged and exited 13th, winning €5,520 for his efforts.

Christian Kall (pictured) and Maksim Tyurin have been sort of chip-jousting this last level, with Tyurin threebetting Kall out of the way preflop at least once.  However, the last time this happened, when Kall raised under the gun to 23k and Tyurin made it 61k, Kall farily quickly reached for 164k total, which brought the hand to an end and some of those chips back to him.

Players are still deep enough to do this sort of thing, though by tomorrow they may be feeling the sting of the escalating blinds.  But for now, Anthon-Pieter Wink can get away with betting a flop, being check-raised by Claus Nielsen to 52k, then make it 110k (half his stack) and get a fold after an agonising-looking minute in the tank for Nielsen.

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…

Hold’em preflop – a game of position and stack size now but sometimes your plans can be scuppered by players you weren’t considering.  This seems to have just happened to Roman Shaposhnikov (pictured), who found himself in the small blind facing a button raise to 4,500.  He peered round at the button’s stack, looked up at the clock (20 mins left at 1k/2k) and then re-raised to 15,000.

Instantly and out of the blue the big blind, the only other player left to act in the hand went all-in.  The button folded immediately, and Shaposhnikov not soon after, and he made one of those hand in the air gestures signifying, “Ah, what are you gonna do?” and made a face like he was sucking a lemon.

Raul Mestre and Sergey Rybachenko have both added to their stacks, having won crucial coinflips at this late stage of the day. Rybachenko’s beating out the :Qh of  a short stack in a classic 43-57 battle after a board.

Mestre secured himself more chips when his went to war against : As , the was the doorcard followed by the and securing more chips for the Spaniard.

Can either of them manage a late surge to the top of the leaderboard?

Belgian pro Mattias De Meulder is no doubt heading upstairs to the welcome party having just been eliminated by Sergey Rybachenko. The Russian’ :4s: holding strong against De Meulder’s on a board of . As a result, Rybachenko has broken through the 100,000 mark and is now the new chip leader.