Toni Judet just had his Main Event run in a most painful manner. Having gotten the last of his stack of about 30,000 in the middle before the flop with against an opponent's , the odds were favorable for the Romanian to improve his status before the dinner break arrives at the end of Level 8.
The flop and turn appeared further to secure Judet's survival, with him even having the club in his hand to rule out any hope-dashing four-flush.
But the dealer burned a card and delivered the river… the ! A set for Judet's opponent, and a quick exit for Judet, who soon delivered the Cliffs to his Twitter followers:
Sam Panzica walked past us en route to the rail moments ago, and when we arrived at this former table, we saw the aftermath of a massive hand. Russian Iman Demidov had sitting in front of him, Cyrill Gustavsson had , and the board read .
All of the money went in preflop, Demidov flopped a massive free roll but the turn and river were both blanks. Panzica hit the rail, while Demidov and Gustavsson split his stack, the blinds, and the antes.
Harig just now found himself engaged in battle with Merson once again, and unfortunately for the German player the results were uncannily similar.
The hand began with a middle position raise to 1,800 followed by a call from Olivier Busquet playing from one seat over. Harig called as well from the hijack, then Merson reraised to 7,100 from the cutoff seat and it folded all of the way back around to Harig who thought a few moments, then called.
The flop came and Harig checked. Merson tossed out a bet of 10,700, then after a half-minute Harig check-raised to 25,000. Merson didn't waste too much time before putting out chips and declaring an all-in shove, and Harig called all in even more quickly.
Harig:
Merson:
Merson had flopped top two pair, but Harig had a set of eights and a big advantage with two cards to come. Alas for Harig, the turn brought the . Much like a year ago, fourth street had been cruel to Harig, in this case giving Merson the better full house. In fact, Harig was already drawing dead as the meaninglessly fell on the river.
Harig shook Merson's hand and departed, and Dan Fleyshman called over from across the table.
"Kind of felt like it was coming?" said Fleyshman to Merson, who grinned in response as he stacked the chips.
Perhaps after what happened on Day 7 in 2012, Merson did. Meanwhile, as the next hand was dealt the table spoke of what had just happened as well as what happened between the two players a year ago.
A little later Merson tweeted about the hand, again recalling the earlier one with Harig:
We recalled that we hadn't seen David Williams in the Pavilion room for quite some time, so we took to twitter and sure enough, he had the details of his bustout there.
Part-time poker player and part-time MMA fighter Terrence Chan has recently been eliminated from the tournament.
After losing a bunch of chips early when his set of threes was cracked by an overpaid, Chan made a small comeback but has eventually succumbed to the rail.
Prior to the start of play today, Russell Thomas — a.k.a. @RunGoodRussell, the fourth-place finisher in last year's WSOP Main Event — got a look at his starting table and sent out a tweet a short while before starting play.
Many players tend to check the seat draws before the start of a new day at the Main Event, and while Tracy Skeen — Seat 1 at Thomas's table — admits she isn't too up on searching the web, she has a friend who is and who filled her in on many of her opponents at today's table.
Just now she was sharing with the table what her friend found out about them all. "He should be a private eye!" she added, and then mentioned Thomas's tweet.
"I was just saying I liked my table," said Thomas by way of explanation and with a sheepish grin. "You mean you weren't saying 'nut in Seat 1'?" asked Skeen jokingly, and Thomas grinned.
Skeen then started identifying some of the others at the the table, and the chuckles continued. "Stop telling everyone our names!" said one, and the table laughed some more.
Of course, the further these players go, the more likely their names will become better known to others, something Thomas well knows thanks to his deep run from a year ago.
George Lind was nursing a short stack as Level 6 had ended. "I'm waiting for the nuts," he told his table at one point with a grin after folding another hand. He was also waiting for his lunch, which he finally picked up at the first break.
Alas for Lind, his Main Event run was cut short here at the start of Level 7 after finally picking up a hand that might've looked like the nuts — — but unfortunately failing to outmatch an opponent's .