Olivier Busquet came into today very short stacked with just around 14,000. Our plan was to keep one eye on him as we figured he would be all in soon, but when we went over there, we noticed there was already someone new in his seat! This means that Busquet has been eliminated, ending his 2011 WSOP.
Here is a list of the players currently seated in the Tan Section (Note that Daniel Negreanu and Ben Lamb are on the featured table and secondary-featured table respectively).
Picking up the action on a board, Martin Hanitz bet 22,000. His lone opponent at this point in the hand called to see the river card where Hanitz fired 45,000. His opponent tanked for about 60 seconds before calling, mucking when Hanitz turned over .
On our first lap around the room, we saw that there was some confusion at one of the tables as it seems a player's bag was missing from his seat. Anton Ionel (who came third at this years PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and second in the $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em Six-Handed at the 2011 WSOP) is missing his 200,000 or so chips that he comes into Day 3 with. It seems the floor is trying to sort it out in as timely a fashion as possible, and they made an announcement asking the players to be on the lookout for the bag. Funny man and former Everybody Loves Raymond star Brad Garrett, took this advantage to make his presence in the Pavilion Room known when he stood up and started screaming in some sort of accent, "I am Anton Ionel, where is my bag???" A floor person was walking by and Garrett grabbed a bag he was holding and began to breath deeply in and out of it, pretending like he was nauseous. Most of the room heard him and was turned to see the man in action.
We went over to check on Garrett to see how he started the day, and he has already turned over for the winning hand and gotten himself to around 65,000. He still has a lot of work to do to get some real chips to play with, but he should be an entertaining player to have around either way
On the board, Claudia Crawford fired 16,300 into Jaime Kaplan. Kaplan called and the river completed the board with the . Crawford fired 20,000 and Kaplan mulled it over for a minute prior to folding. Crawford showed a set of jacks as she raked in the chips.
As we were doing our rounds through the Tan Section here in the Amazon Room, we noticed an empty chair in Seat 6 on Table 263. That was the seat assigned to Jason Mercier for the start of Day 3. Given it is now empty and void of chips, we can only assume that Mercier has been eliminated from the Main Event, which isn't a surprise considering he started the day with a short stack if 34,400.
Jeremy Saunders raised to 3,400 on the button and Lars Bonding three-bet to 8,800 from the small blind. The big blind folded, Saunders called, and the flop came down .
Bonding's bet of 10,200 was called by Saunders, landing the on the turn. Another bet was on the way from Bonding, this time for 16,200. Saunders re-raised all in and Bonding called quickly, tabling . Saunders was not happy at all, showing .
The river was the , ending Saunders' tournament and increasing Bonding's stack to about 215,000.
We caught the action on the flop with Jean-Robert Bellande heads up with Paul Volpe. The board read , and Bellande checked to Volpe, who bet out 2,500. Bellande put in a check raise to 9,000, and Volpe made the call.
The turn brought the , and Bellande fired out 11,000. This time it was Volpe's turn to raise, as he made it 27,500. Bellande made the call, and the river brought the . Despite being what appeared to be an action card, both players checked, and Bellande revealed for a rivered flush, and Volpe mucked his hand. That pot brought Bellande up to nearly 200,000.