The last break of the tournament, between levels 12 and 13, gave us the opportunity to survey the scene, and find out how the players are doing. The players still have two 40-minute levels to go, before bagging chips. The end of this flight will mark the end of Day 1s in the Colossus Event.

It’s no surprise that Sydney Barnier is the chip leader. This is due in large part to the huge hand he won just before the break. He is now sitting on 427,000 chips and will do everything in his power to maintain and improve it.

We did find a few stacks above the 300,000 level and are listed here.

Some hands can make or break a tournament.

At the end of level 12, and just a few minutes before the scheduled break we witnessed such a hand.

Pre-flop Sydney Barnier was all-in with two other players: Rajendra Patel and Jean-Francois Alexandre. After receiving their cards, each player probably looked at their own hand and thought to himself: “Yes, finally, I needed this!”. But when all the cards were tabled, two players were in for a nasty surprise… the best hands in No Limit Hold’em were tabled:

Sydney Barnier:

Rajendra Patel:

Jean-Francois Alexandre:

The board was dry , and the bullets held their ground.

Bernier’s original stack covered the other two players. Jean-Francois Alexandre had kept a decent stack all day, so Sydney Bernier scooped up the mother load and could still be seen rearranging his chips 2 hands later.

After level 9 players went on a well-deserved break, and we went searching for our chip leaders. John Slaughter seems to have found a nice groove and has managed to build up a respectable 319,500 chip stack. As always, the players know better than to fall into complacency. Poker is a game full of surprises, and Lady Luck is fickle and has an evil sense of humor, as any player can attest to.

We’ll keep an eye out on the action and see if John Slaughter can maintain his lead.

Here are the top 3 chip leaders after 9 levels: