We did a more complete survey of the Tournament Hall at the beginning of level 9 and found several teams that have managed to build up good chip stacks during the early going, but no one is even close to the team on Table 60, Seat 4 – Team Caron St-Georges, who have already accumulated over 320,000 in chips!

The first time the Tag Team players switch spots has just come and gone, and after a few seconds of seeming chaos, the second player on each team has taken his or her spot at the table and the players have settled in for level 8.

There are no extended breaks in this tournament, as each player gets a full level “off” while their partner is playing their team’s stack. This can make it difficult to get accurate counts, but a survey of the room during level 7 indicated that the current chip leading team was already playing a stack of over 220,000 chips – a huge increase on the 50K they started with as a team!

The merge has been successfully completed for the 134 teams that made it to the merge with at least one player – there were 18 teams who saw both players eliminated before team play began. The teams are now much of the way through level 7 and everyone seems settled in now – one player at the tournament table, his or her partner either waiting nearby or playing on one of the special cash game tables reserved for Tag Team Players.

During the break we took the opportunity to get a lot of team photos.

The end of level 6 is coming quickly, and when it ends there will be an extended break during which the individual players will be merged and given new seat assignments for the team. There are 152 teams currently registered, and in anticipation of this, the break will be somewhat longer than usual – around 25 minutes long.

Following this, the teams are truly in Tag Team mode, with each team member playing one level and then passing off to his/her teammate. If a team wishes to switch the order they may do so, but must spend a consultation chip in order to make the change.

The Tag Team event is moving along smoothly as 146 teams – 292 players at this stage of the tourney – have registered. Every team member is trying to accumulate as large a stack as possible so that when the players merge their stacks, they’ll be as strong as possible to move forward in the team phase of the event.

Unfortunately for some teams, a player busts in this early portion of the tournament, in which case the team may continue following the merge – but with only one stack to bring to bear, those teams can be relatively disadvantaged. Today, this is already the case for 48 players – though it’s unlikely there are not some entire teams in that count.

This is the true disaster for a team – if both players are eliminated in this phase of the event. With no stacks left to merge, such teams won’t continue to the next phase.

The Tag Team event is now underway and there are already 131 teams in the tournament – 262 individual players are currently playing their 25K stacks to start the event, and the teams will merge at the end of level 6.

Here are some photos of a few of the teams in the event.