Philipp Gruissem made a standard raise from the cutoff seat and it folded around to the tourney's current shortest stack Mario Silvestri who shoved all in from the big blind for 900,000. Gruissem called, showing . Silvestri tabled .
The flop came , hitting Gruissem's hand and keeping him in the lead. The turn was the , though, swinging the advantage over to Silvestri. And the river gave the short stack the best two pair, enabling Silvestri to double up to about 2 million. Gruissem now has 3.11 million.
We caught the action on the turn, where the board read . Ben Lamb led out for 625,000 from the small blind, and Guillaume Darcourt made the call from the big. The river was the , and Lamb checked. Darcourt slid out 1.025 million, and Lamb went into the tank.
"I don't think I can fold," he admitted.
After pausing for a little longer, Lamb made the call. Darcourt turned over for a rivered straight, and Lamb unhappily mucked his hand.
We're one level into this Day 7, and we've already seen quite the shakeup in the middle of the chip counts.
One thing hasn't changed, though. Start-of-day chip leader Ryan Lenaghan is still on top with about 11.7 million -- though that number is just a bit smaller than it was two hours ago, and he's got a few players organizing an attack as they fly right up behind his tail. Andrey Pateychuck is one of them, improving his count to the second spot unofficially with around 9.7 million at the break. The man he's replaced, Ben Lamb started the day in that second spot, but he's had some trouble getting going so far today. Running kings into Guillaume Darcourt's aces didn't help, but Lamb did well to lose only a fraction of his stack. We'll get a better count for him while the cameras are off over there, but it looks like he's got about 7.6 million now.
Team PokerStars Pro JP Kelly is the big mover early, though. He was just below the chip average when Day 7 began, but he found an early double when his topped Matt Giannetti's . Gianetti fell back into the pack with that loss, but Kelly was just getting started. He knocked out Minh Nguyen with an of his own, and Nguyen's betrayed him to send him off to the cashier in 56th place. Kelly dropped a pot later in the level, but he's still improved his stack to about 8.5 million at the break.
Others to join Nguyen on the rail include Zo Karim, Matthew Kay, Andrew Brokos, Per Linde, and former bracelet winner Sebastian Ruthenberg. They've all been beaten by a lady as Erika Moutinho is still representing the women in poker well with her count of about 3.5 million.
The surviving players have headed off for their first break of the day, and we're headed to their tables to get some hard counts. We'll be right back with those, and the players will be back in 15 minutes for another round of action.
From the last featured table counts, you can see a big upward trend from Stephane Albertini, and it happened on the last hand before the break.
David Sands was the preflop raiser, and his 135,000-chip raise was called by Albertini, John Hewitt, and John Esposito, the latter coming along from the big blind. The four men took a flop, and Albertini bet 315,000. Hewitt called while the other two ducked out, and the dropped on the turn. Albertini checked to allow his opponent to bet 650,000 before he check-raised to 1.430 million. It worked. The fold came, and Albertini raked the pot to move his way up to the count you see.
In order to balance the tables, the featured table has had to bid farewell to Pius Heinz. His time under the spotlight is over for now, and he'll take about 4.5 million chips with him as returns his microphone and carries the racks out onto the main floor.