Getting to the money took the clock all the way down to only 8 minutes remaining in the 6th level of play for the day.  Six levels were the plan for the day, though tournament officials had hoped that would get the field down to 26 players.  With another full day still slated to bring the field down to the final table of nine the decision was made to go ahead and stop for the night at a very easy breaking point with players reaching the money, hitting a table break and the clock almost at the end of a level.

During hand for hand play the press was kept away from the tables to make sure the area was clear for the camera crews.  As a result updates on the players are a little slim, but full chip counts and seating assignments for the final 36 will be made available shortly.

2007 runner up John Tabatabai was the bubble boy of the tournament, busting after a preflop all in where his pocket aces were cracked by Peter Gould’s sevens that flopped a set.  Before Tabatabai’s elimination we did hear through the grapevine that Eric “P3achy_keen” Liu (right)lost a chunk of chips when his pocket kings found the pocket aces of Ram Vaswani.  Even after doubling Ram there was still over 200k in Liu’s stack and by the end of hand for hand play his stack had grown back above the 300k mark.

Midday chip monster and major tournament crusher over the last year Yevgeniy “Atimos” Timoshenko saw his monster pile of at one time 650k chips dwindle to just under 300k.  Less than half what he once had but plenty enough to make Timoshenko a huge threat with 36 players left in the World Series of Poker Europe presented by Betfair.

How the day ended for Jason “treysfull” Mercier and Christian “charder” Harder is the great unknown.  The tables on the upstairs balcony where they were located was pretty much cordoned off by the ESPN crews and other than seeing the tops of their heads to note they were still at the table’s there wasn’t much more that could be ascertained about the two players.

The payout structure, as well as the blinds and antes are available through the Blind and Payout Structures link in the left toolbar. All payouts have been converted to US dollars and may not be exact. Play will start tomorrow with level 17. Blinds of 3k / 6k with a 500 ante.

Select Chip Counts:

10.) Eric “P3achy_keen” Liu - 330,500
15.) Yevgeniy “Atimos” Timoshenko - 285,000
18.) Andre “aakkari” Akkari - 272,000
22.) Christian “charder” Harder - 243,000
31.) Christian “CKRUEL” Kruel - 140,000
32.) Jason “treysfull21″ Mercier - 125,000

Full Chip Counts With Seat Assignments:

• September 30, 2009 -- Four Down, 23 To Go… For Today
• September 30, 2009 -- WSOP Europe 2009 Day 4 Gallery
• September 30, 2009 -- End Run
• September 29, 2009 -- Crowd Around, Double Ups Abound