The board read when Timothy Reilly checked to Antonio Esfandiari who moved all in for 14,375. There was about 8,500 in the middle and after a while Reilly decided to let go of his hand.
Esfandiari and Reilly both have about half of the starting stack, but the former is the one who started a little upward trend.
The board read when we arrived on the scene. Ole Schemion was facing a shove by Simon Higgins who had put him all in for his tournament life.
Schemion went into the tank for quite a while but eventually he called for a total of 27,150. Higgins showed and that was nog enough versus Schemion's . The German pro doubled up and Higgins drops down to below half the average stack.
Germany's Martin Finger just scooped a big pot off opponent Roberto Rodrigues from Brazil. In a three-bet pot, Finger turned a full house holding pocket queens and was able to score a lot of value. So much so that he's now up to 124,000 in chips.
Ole Schemion fied a bet of 4,200 on the flop. Sylvain Loosli called behind, and then the third player in the hand called.
The turn was the , and all three players checked to see the land on the river. After Schemion checked, Loosli bet 7,500. The next player folded, as did Schemion, and Loosli scooped the pot.
Last year the $25,000 High Roller event at the PCA drew a crowd of 161 unique players and a total of 43 re-entries. This year, with still a full day of late registration remaining there are already 162 players!
The total amount of entries last year added up to 204 and Vanessa Selbst walked away with the $1,424,420 first place prize. With the current number already exceeding last year's unique players there's a good chance the first prize will eclipse the $1.5 million mark.