The players took a short unscheduled break to discuss a deal and were able to quickly come to an agreement. They agreed that Michael Linster (chip leader) would take $200,000 and both Eric Despres and Henri Balcazar would take $150,000 each. That leaves $44,044 plus the trophy in the prize pool for first place. Play continues.

After a long stretch of play, Guillaume Rivet found himself short-stacked, and after Despres opened to 575K and Balcazar folded, Rivet shoved holding . Linster folded the big blind and the initial raiser snap-called with .

Despres was behind but caught some additional outs on the flop and the gave him a better pair. The on the river was a blank for Rivet and he was eliminated in 4th place.

4th place: Guillaume Rivet, $96,151

The players are now on a slightly extended break but it will do them good to be able to catch their breath after a stunning succession of eliminations towards the end of the last level. There are just 4 players remaining in the tournament after a long period of 7-handed play – but as I wrote earlier, though there were no eliminations the game was anything but static as Michael Linster managed to chip up against the field into a dominant position.

Linster still has a strong chip lead – 20M compared with just under 13M for Guillaume Rivet, 11.5M for Henri Balcazar and 6.2M for Eric Despres – there’s still a chance for Rivet or Balcazar in particular to challenge Linster at the top of the leaderboard.

5th place: Bill Kontaratos, $74,714

6th place: Vineet Pahuja, $58,006

It seemed for a while that something was about to happen, and on this hand it did.

Guillaume Rivet opened the action with a min-raise, Eric Despres called and Roger Lamia 3-bet to 1.3M. Rivet then took a minute or so to think things through and then went all-in for almost 6M (covering both Despres and Lamia). Despres quickly folded but Lamia quickly called.

Rivet: Lamia: . The board brought slight hope to Lamia as the flop came out but the turn and river gave Rivet the pot, adding 4.6M to his stack.

7th place: Roger Lamia, $44,923

Event 8 has gone an hour since the last elimination (including a break) but the action has been anything BUT static. The players are being pretty cagey but Mike Linster has managed to chip up handily against the field up to over 19M tournament chips.

Zeng Yi Xie has been eliminated from the tournament in 8th place. He got his chips in on the flop of holding against Eric Despres’ . The turn and river didn’t bring Zeng his flush and top pair was good.

8th place: Zeng Yi Xie, $35,150

THe 8 players remaining are back from a 15-minute break to play level 31, blinds 60K/120K/a20K. This jump in the antes makes the shorter stacks relatively smaller than just a few minutes ago, so there’s a good chance the action heats up even more in this level.

Colin Piché was one of the shorter stacks to start the day, but managed to hang around for a while before getting it with pocket 8s against Michael Linster’s pocket jacks.

9th place: Colin Piché, $27,269