The All-Stars for Starlight field is down to 18 players, meaning we now have our two final tables. John Palmer has been steadily increasing his stack, and now has a stranglehold lead on the rest of the players as he nears 2.5 million in chips – roughly 3 times the average stack. Said Michailidis only has half of Palmer’s chips, however his 1.3 million occupies the second spot on the leaderboard. Other players above the 1-million chip mark include Jonathan Bussieres and Prosper Azoulay, while Eric Ranger and Mathieu Leclerc are not far behind.

Here is a look at the final 2 tables:

The All-Stars for Starlight event is down to 27 players from a starting field of 685, and the field is now down to just three 9-handed tables. Below is a look a the seating distribution of the remaining players:

Shortly after the bubble burst in the All-Stars for Starlight, play went on a short break and during this time we did some chip counts. Leading the field is Said Michailidis, who nears the 600K mark, however now that the play is in the money we can expect to see some big pots developing in the upcoming levels.

Here is a look at the leaderboard:

Photographs taken during hand-for-hand play:

Play continued down to 64 players remaining in a very orderly fashion… and then the tournament moved to hand for hand play. After 6 hands, finally there was an all-in and a call on Table 62 – and another all-in and call on table 64. All of the players concerned tabled their hands and waited for the rest of the action to close on the remaining tables. There was a bit of a sweat as a relatively short-stacked player on table 66 faced a big decision as well – but he finally folded and the action proceeded.

Table 62

Qiang “Ocean” Dong: (at risk; 40K remaining)
Normand Loyer: (called)

The board ran out and Normand’s two-pair was good and Ocean was eliminated.

Table 64

Blind on blind.
Eric Benhamron: (at risk; 112K remaining)
Jonathan Bussières:

The board ran out and Jonathan’s kicker sent Eric to the rail.

Eric and Ocean split the 63rd place prize of $325, earning $162.50 each.

When play resumed there were just a few minutes left in the level (and before the next break) but this was enough for 3 additional players to bust.

With just 70 players remaining in the All-Stars for Starlight tournament, the bubble is officially looming. But that’s not to say there’s a huge amount of tension in the room – it’s still a $160 tournament, after all, and players seem quick to laugh as well.

We just witnessed such an occasion on Table 68. Eric Dahan was facing a huge bet from John Palmer – the current chip leader – and he asked, “Will you show if I fold?”

John’s only response was to shrug, and Eric went ahead and folded his hand. John mucked his cards which was followed by this exchange:

“I thought you said you’d show if I folded!”

“I just shrugged!”

“True, but I thought it was more of a ‘yes’ shrug than a ‘no’ shrug…”