We hadn't been able to catch much action with Mike "Timex" McDonald toady and unfortunately won't be able to for the remainder of the afternoon, as his seat is now empty. Here is his personal explanation, from Twitter.
MikeMcDonald89 Mike McDonaldOut of the 1.5k, got coolered a few timesJune 03 2012
We found Tony Dunst engaged in a hand where the board read with over 5,000 in the pot. Dunst's opponent checked and after a moment, Dunst checked as well.
The river was the and Dunst's opponent checked again. Dunst thought for a while before rapping the table.
"I have an ace," said Dunst's opponent, flipping over .
"An ace is good," replied Dunst, flinging away his hand. Dunst is currently sitting on 21,000.
There is currently only a few tables left in the Pavilion Room and one of them happens to be one of the toughest in the tournament. Seated at the same table includes Mike Matusow, Vitaly Lunkin and Dan Shak. Between them they have more than $15 million in tournament winnings and are some of the toughest players in the poker world. Dan Shak is doing the best out of these three, seeing his stack rise to 16,000 this afternoon.
While browsing the tables in the Brasilia room we found an empty seat that used to be occupied by bracelet holder Gavin Smith. We can only assume that Smith has hit the rail.
Level five just commenced and while doing a walk through we found Eric Cajelais all in and at risk for around 7,500.
Cajelais:
Opponent:
The dealer then unleashed a board and Cajelais was sent packing as his pair of eights weren't up to snuff. Cajelais who boasts over $2,500,000 in tournament winnings was probably a happy sight for most as he walked out of the Brasilia Room.
The players have marched back into their seats and are back to play.
Blinds are 100-200 at the moment and with hundreds of players sitting with a short stack, expect this gigantic field to get a lot smaller during the next couple of levels.
The tournament clock currently tells us that 3,392 players have registered for Event 9. That means that today's field is sitting at 1,696 - precisely the number of entrants in yesterday's flight. Let's see if another player or two registers late.