The field has reduced to 19 players on three tables, and flops are increasingly scarce. It’s possible to stand somewhere in the middle of the three of them for 15 minutes at a stretch without seeing any cards face up. The usual drill goes raise, re-raise, fold, fold, fold, etc., although there’s sometimes a variation on the theme, which goes raise, fold, fold, fold, etc.

The tournament officials have just conducted a chip race to remove the 500 denomination chips from play, and shortly before they did there was a mildly diverting hand between William Fry and Johnny Lodden, featuring a cameo from Lucas Benkovic, the PokerStars qualifier from Slovakia. One of the button, Fry raised to 22,000 and Benkovic, in the small blind, did a degree of huffing and puffing and looking at his hand without concealing it much, which allowed Lodden, still to act, to see his cards from the big blind chair.

For all the vast amounts of money up for grabs, there’s still a surprising amount of sportsmanship to most poker events, and Lodden confessed that he’d seen the cards, encouraging the dealer to show them to Fry as well. It was eight-six off-suit. Then Lodden put his headphones back on and re-raised to 80,000. Fry asked for a count, Lodden told him 130,000 an Fry folded.

Don’t forget, the prizewinners to date are all being added to our payouts and prizewinners page.

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