Alexandru Baron button-raised to 14K, and Noeung Troeung 3-bet to 46K from the big blind. After a moment in the tank, Alexandru 4-bet all-in for 263.5K. Noeung thought for around 3 minutes before committing the chips, and the two were flipping for a pot north of 500K.

Alexandru:
Neoung:

Alexandru smashed the board to earn the pot, leaving Neoung with around 10 big blinds behind.

In the last hand of level 17, Hendrik Latz opened to 11K from the cutoff, and found a call from Alexandru Baron on the button. The small blind folded, and David Graves 3-bet to 43K from the big blind. Hendrik placed a 4-bet to 103K, and this was quickly followed by the all-in of Alexandru for 96.5K. Without too much hesitation, David announced all-in over the top, covering both opponents. Hendrik, who started the hand with just under 350K, went into the tank for a few minutes. Eventually he shook his head and slammed some chips forward, and a massive 3-way pot was created.

David:
Hendrik:
Alexandru:

Board:

Alexandru sky-rocketed up to nearly 300K with his aces, while David was forced to pay out an additional 242.5K to Hendrik after matching Alexandru’s 96.5K all-in, leaving him with just over 100K behind after the hand.

Hand for hand action was on just it’s fourth hand when a huge hand developed on table 60.

Action folded around to short-stacked Thundup Ringpa on the button, who elected to raise to 12.5K. Jean-Pascal Savard, playing the small blind, raised to 38K. Matthew Wilkins (bb) folded and action was back on Thundup – who went all-in for his remaining 230K. Jean-Pascal quickly made the call, and the hands were tabled:

Thundup:
Jean-Pascal:

Before the dealer ran the board, however, everyone waited while another hand played out on table 61, right next door. Nghi Van Tran and Ryan Tack Yu had reached the turn after some fairly standard pre-flop action blind on blind, check check on the flop, and then an overbet to 40K from Tran on the turn. Ryan shoved all-in over the top, sending Tran deep into the tank – to the extent that Christian Harder quite justifiably called time. As the dealer allowed the first 30 seconds to pass, Tran accused himself of being a chicken and folded.

The bubble hand could now be completed – and the runout was straight out of the movies.

Flop:

The turn was a game changer: ! Thundup had gotten a little help from the flop but turned close to a 9-1 underdog hand into a better than 9-1 favourite!

River:

Jean-Pascal had hit the one-outer! And just like that, Thudup was sent to the rail in 49th place.

Shortly after doubling his 101K stack pre-flop with over the of Demo Kiriopoulos, Doug Hartwick was involved in another big pot. This time he was holding when the money went in versus Daniel Renaud on a flop. Daniel tabled for top-set, but was out-drawn to the flush as the running cards brought the and the .

Doug added over 80K new chips to his now healthy stack, bringing the WPT Playground into hand-for-hand as we are but one elimination from being in-the-money.