While scouring the room we came across a massive chip stack sitting in front of one Thomas Roupe. Roupe holds around 240,000 and possess a quite intimidating mountain of chips. Racked in stacks of 50, Roupe's chips take up a giant portion of his seat. Its a wonder he even has room to look at his hole cards.
Play has certainly slowed down now that we getting farther and farther away from the bursting of the bubble. Players are still dropping off, but now at a far less chaotic rate. 178 players now remain, all of which have a lot of poker ahead of them if they want that gold bracelet.
You can't walk around the floor here in the Amazon room without hearing "all in", "seat open", and "good luck everybody". Now that all remaining players are in the money, short stacks are moving all in and being eliminated quickly.
Players are dropping like flies, and a couple of players we noticed no longer in their seats are Lauren Kling, Jon Aguiar, Victor Ramdin, and Isaac Haxton.
Thomas Roach was all in on one table with pocket queens against an opponent's pocket jacks. Unfortunately, his opponent hit a jack and Roach was eliminated.
Fortunately for Roach though, Ben Lefew was all in on another table with the and lost to Bhakta Rizal's to bust on the same hand. That meant the two would split 243rd-place money and not go home empty handed.
It looks like Pratik Ghatge is our bubble boy for the day. Ghatge open pushed recently while we were hand-for-hand with , his opponent snap-called him with . It looked like hand-for-hand play was going to continue for a while longer, but an on the river sent Ghatge home with no money.
Once it was announced that the bubble had burst the remaining field cheered in unison.
While hand-for-hand play goes on, a few players have gotten their money in, but doubled to stay alive.
From the cutoff seat, Jeff Keena raised to 3,600 and was all in. He was called by Andrew Spears in the big blind with the . Keena held the . The flop came down and Keena was excited about his chances, but Spears did have a gutshot straight draw.
The turn was the and Keena, who was standing and leaning anxiously over the table, popped upright and slapped his hands together in celebration. Still, Spears wasn't dead yet and could hit a nine to bust Keena.
The river completed the board with the and Keena officially doubled. Some of the table commented about how he prematurely celebrated and it could have come back to bite him.
"So what, I had one card to come and was happy?" said Keena. "I can't celebrate, heck," he joked. The table laughed and then Keena exaggerated his celebration by yelling "Yeah!" and slamming his fists on the table in a joking manner.
On another table, Kevin Funderburk was all in with the against Jason Lee's . Funderburk was all in from the big blind for 3,000 total and fell behind after the flop fell. The turn paired the board and gave Funderburk a couple more outs before the landed on the river and doubled him up with a straight.
We are now at hand-for-hand play, awaiting the elimination of one more player. Once that happens all players remaining in the field will have made the money.
![[user198174]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
and lost to Bhakta Rizal's 
to bust on the same hand. That meant the two would split 243rd-place money and not go home empty handed.
. It looked like hand-for-hand play was going to continue for a while longer, but an 
. Keena held the 
. The flop came down 
and Keena was excited about his chances, but Spears did have a gutshot straight draw.
and Keena, who was standing and leaning anxiously over the table, popped upright and slapped his hands together in celebration. Still, Spears wasn't dead yet and could hit a nine to bust Keena.
and Keena officially doubled. Some of the table commented about how he prematurely celebrated and it could have come back to bite him.
against Jason Lee's 
flop fell. The turn 
paired the board and gave Funderburk a couple more outs before the 
landed on the river and doubled him up with a straight.