Danny Freitas final tabled the Colossus and though he spent significant stretches of time in the chip lead in the tournament, he ended up going out 6th – a fate he promised not to repeat. He’s repeating at least part of the experience – he has made the final table. But he doesn’t just have a lead – has more than double the chips of any of this opponents.

Play now continues in level 35.

Play in the Main Event has maintained a very fast pace throughout the tournament, which has had the side benefit that the chip average is still a relatively deep 44bb. But with pay jumps becoming more meaningful, the play has slowed down to the extent that after a full level of play there have been no eliminations.

In fact, the first double up just occurred in a hand between Maxime Boulais and Maxime Lejeune Hebert. Lejeune Hebert opened the action and Boulais went all in from the bb for just over 2.3M. Lejeune Hebert called.

Boulais:
Lejeune Hebert:

Community cards:

Boulais doubled up with his pair to get close to a 20bb stack.

With 21 players starting Day 4, there was a chance that today would progress at a “deliberate” pace – in other words, slowly. The opposite has proven to be true however – in just over 2 levels of poker, 12 players have been eliminated and the 9-handed final table is set. The most recent elimination was Maxime Theroux, who won $18,000 for his efforts.

Here is the new seating draw:

After some fairly standard preflop action, Goran Brestovac was all in facing Mike Leah’s call.

Mike:
Goran:

Goran may have suffered from “too many outs” syndrome on the flop of and then even more on the turn . But the on the river missed, and Mike’s Ace won the hand.

Goran was followed to the rail by Ben Underwood, who was in a downswing that he couldn’t survive.

12th place: Goran Brestovac, $18,000

11th place: Ben Underwood, $18,000

The players in the Main Event just went on break and while they were away we got full counts for the remaining field. Danny Freitas is solidly in the lead – he has more than double his nearest competitor – but with such a solid field of remaining players, it would be a mistake to give him a crown prematurely – there are lots of players left with both the skills and the chips to do a lot of damage.

While we were preparing this new leaderboard, Dave Kauffeldt was eliminated in 13th place.

13th place: Dave Kauffeldt, $16,000

Danny Freitas and Nathan Hall have been two of the more active players in the tournament, both of them having spent time among the chip leaders. They just played a huge hand for the first 25M chip pot in the tourney.

Danny opened the action with a raise to 500K, followed by a 3bet from Nathan to 1.65M. Danny 4bet to 4.5M, but Nathan wasn’t going anywhere – he shoved. Danny made the call.

Danny:
Nathan:

The bad news came right in the window: . Bad news for Nathan, that is, Danny was elated by his good fortune. The turn and river were the and and Danny counted out 12.53M for Nathan to match. Luckily for Nathan, he had a huge stack going into the hand, so he is left still playing over 12M.