Crowd Around, Double Ups Abound
by Court on 09.29.09, 5:53 pm
Before the dinner break there were plenty of people watching the action from the rail. The casino was full but moving around was still possible. It now looks like someone from the casino went out on the street and paid people to come in and crowd around the 
tournament. As the night gets later more and more people are showing up to watch the action at this intense stage of the tournament.
The five remaining tables are now spread out with only the two in the upstairs balcony are being near each other. Yevgeniy “Atimos” Timoshenko and his 500k stack have been moved down to the feature table while Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger (right) was one of the unfortunate players eliminated during the first level back from break and had to vacate his seat at the feature table. From a distance it looks like Eric “P3achy_keen” Liu has built up a couple of stacks of the 5k chips worth 100k each and a very conservative estimate of his stack from upstairs and 40 feet away puts him at 250K+.
Also in the 250k plus range are the side by side Christian “charder” Harder and Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier (pictured left, Mercier in white) who both have had their struggles during the day. Their fates seem to be tied so far, when one is up the other is up and when one loses chips the other seems to follow suit. For now they are both on an upswing with each winning a big double up hand.
Harder was all in preflop with queens against his opponents A9 and won the pot. At break he was sitting on exactly 300,500 while Mercier doubled with pocket nines against AQ in a race situation with Tommy Pavlicek. He lost a little after the double up but was able to 3-bet on the last hand before the break to get his stack up to around 260k. A player had opened for 11k (blinds at 2k / 4k 500 ante) and Mercier raised to 27,500 which was enough to run everyone off and away from the table as they headed out for the break.
The money bubble has a great slowing effect on poker tournaments and the minimum payout of £21,142 or roughly $33,500 is more than enough to make players want to make it to the money. On top of that, players are now within sniffing distance of a final table at a major poker tournament and almost all of the action now is either on a feature table with hole card cams or on a table with plenty of cameras around recording the major action.
Four more to get to the money and then play is scheduled to continue down to the final 27. Tournament staff can make the decision to change that plan anytime they see fit, but either way at least one more full level will be played out. Players will be headed back to the levels to take on the 2,500 / 5,000 500 ante level as soon as the clock has ran out on the break.
