Phil Collins raised to 8,000 from under the gun and found one customer in the shape of Raymond Matthaei in the big blind. The pair of bracelet hopefuls watched on as the dealer put the first three community cards into view: .
Matthaei led out for 10,500 and Collins folded his hand.
A couple of hands later, Gregory Kolo opened the betting with an early position raise to 8,000. Collins called from the big blind then checked when the flop fell . Kolo continued his aggression with a continuation bet of 12,000 but quickly ducked out of the way when Collins responded with a check-raise to 25,000.
On the last hand before the dinner break, Dean Bui opened to 8,000 from early position and Tom McCormick potted to 30,000, leaving him with just about 20,000 behind. Bui made the call and the flop was .
Bui threw out enough chips to put McCormick all in and McCormick snap-called, tabling . Bui turned over and needed to find two runners to eliminate McCormick.
The board ran out though, and McCormick received the much needed double up.
Level 16 has ended and the players are on a 60-minute dinner break.
The players have been informed that 10 levels will be played tonight regardless of how many players remain. That means there is another four hours of play, plus one more break, taking us to around 12:30 a.m. before the players are bagging and tagging their chips.
Jason Mercier joined the PokerNews Podcast to talk about the World Series of Poker, not engaging in bracelet bets and the first time he ever played online poker. Then, all hell breaks loose. The crew rants about televised poker, Galen Hall and Jesse Martin break the live stream, and there are surprise visits by Allen Kessler, Matt Glantz and Matt Salsberg.
A raise from middle position to 14,000 from Kezu Oshima was met with a three-bet to 32,000 from Anton Smirnov in the cutoff and a call from Dean Bui in the big blind. Oshima relinquished his and it was heads up to the flop.
Both players checked the flop, and Bui checked the turn before calling a 28,000 bet from Smirnov.
That was the end of the betting because both players checked the river.
"Tell me I win this hand," said Bui before turning over .
Smirnov mucked and Bui let out a scream of "YES!" before stacking up his new chips.
Scott Eskenazi was left nursing a tiny stack containing 17,000 after his ran into David Martirosyan's in an all-in preflop confrontation. The board ran and Eskenazi had to hand over 98,000 of his stack.
A couple of hands later, he was all in from under the gun for those 17,000 chips and Ahmed Amin reraised him to 28,000. The other active players folded, Eskenazi opened and saw that his opponent held
By the river the board had run and with that Eskenazi was done and dusted.