Just after midnight, as level 11 turned to level 12, there was a three-way pot at table 82 that saw two players (Shaui Zeng and Yann Prevost-Dumont) go all in against a larger stack (Gino Frenette), resulting in an early exit for Shuai and a triple-up for Yann.

With the blinds at 600 / 1,200, the hand started with four players seeing the flop after a min-raise of 2,500.

Flop:

Four checks later, a was dealt on fourth street. Shuai made it 3,500 to go, and after 1 player folded it was a three-way race.

The river was dealt a , and again Shuai led out with a bet of 11K. He was called by Yann and then raised significantly by Gino to 60K. Gino easily covered both Shuai and Yann’s stack of approximately 20K and 15K, respectively.

In the end, both smaller stacks made the call.

Gino:

Shuai:

Yann:

So, while Shuai was leading after the flop, the turn didn’t bring him any good news, giving Gino a straight and Yann a boat. Shuai’s night was done, and Gino was lucky he wasn’t facing off against opponents with larger stacks.

The clock has just struck midnight, however players in the WPT500 Day 1D still have a little way to go before they can call it a night. We have just begun round 12, meaning another 5 levels of play remain. A short break is scheduled to take place in around half an hour, at which point we will publish an update on the current top stacks from the flight.

Photographs from levels 10-11:

After 5.5 hours of play, we have reached the cut-off point for registration. Now that the dust has settled, we can report that there were 253 entries (including 46 re-entries), providing of total of 7,590,000 chips in play.

With an average chip stack of 65K there is still lots of poker left, so good luck to all of the 116 players still in the hunt for a shot at Day 2! And if you haven’t had a chance to join us at Playground Poker Club yet this week, don’t worry! There are still three chances to play in the WPT $500 + $50 Single Re-entry and to make it to Day 2. There are two flights occurring tomorrow (Sunday) and a 4-hour turbo flight on Monday at 11am.

Day 2 commences Monday at 3pm.

Every once in a while at the tables both players see a card on the river and are privately overjoyed. Each player thinks they’ve just struck gold, but one is always wrong. That was the case just now on table 81, in a battle between Michael Wang and Andrew Noce.

We joined this table late in the action, with the board showing the following cards:

The pot had approximately 35K chips in it, and Andrew was utg. With the bb at 1K, he bet 16K. Michael studied the board for a solid minute, and raised all in. Andrew called.

Andrew:

Michael:

So while Andrew had an open-ended straight draw since the turn, the 8 on the river was a poison pill, giving him trip 8s. Unfortunately for Andrew, the river card made Michael’s gut-shot straight, giving him the nuts. Michael doubled up his (approximately) 90K chips, leaving Andrew with precious little to work with for the rest of the night.

Photographs from level 9:

After 8 full levels of play the players took their second break. The group of chip leaders has changed somewhat, with Pascal Monarque maintaining his lead. The following players are also at the top of the leaderboard going into the final half of tonight’s flight.