Play is getting very deep in today’s Bounty tournament as there are just 16 players left at the tables. The leaderboard is entirely new as well, with no one among the top 4 who has occupied such a spot all afternoon.

The bubble is approaching – 12 players will be paid today – and we should have a final table quite quickly this evening.

The tournament pace is picking up as the rich get richer and the short-stacked start to really feel it, and there are finally a few players with over-100K stacks that are happy to relieve the short-stacked of their chips – and their bounty chips as well.

Here’s a photo of today’s trophy:

There has been a lot of friendly banter at table 66, including a passage in which Andreas and Shijaudin Daud Sha were laughing about how they had played together enough to never believe the other, and more in that vein, when Daud Sha raised to 5K from utg. Action folded around to Andreas, who shoved for a half-average stack, about 30K. Daud Sha made the call and the cards were revealed.

Daud Sha:
Andreas:

Andreas was in a good spot and stayed there as the board ran out .

In a hand on the other table over, a player was eliminated which took the event down to 40 players – they’re down to 4 tables now.

Event #6 continues to move along, and going into level 9, just under half of the field remains. Bounties are flying too – Lee Daud Sha already has earned 6 bounty chips.

Here are a few new photos from level 8

Four levels is much too early to take a lot of stock in what the leaderboard looks like, but early or not, these players have given themselves an advantage to this point by amassing lots of chips early. The current chip leader, with over 62K, is Paul Brunet.

Other photos

Event #6 is already through to level 3 and with late registration remaining open until 1:30, there is still plenty of time to jump in the action. So far there are 87 players seated but as usual we expect to welcome new players all the way until the end of the late reg period.