Sunday, January 30, 2005

Watson? Are you there?

It appears after several hours of furious scrambling to fix the Internet server here at the Radisson, we've returned to something resembling connectivity.

In an age when we're used to getting whatever we want on demand, having to wait nearly three hours seems like an eternity, especially when there is fast and furious poker action going on. Out of fear you'd think I'd abandoned my post, I actually called the wife back in the states and asked her to post the Technical Difficulties entry.

But, we're back...hopefully for good.

Since I've spent a lot of time trying to get our connection back, I'll simply give you a few brief updates.

At 9PM Denmark time, we have 88 players left out of the original 156. Some well-knowns busted before the dinner break. Left to the cash games or next tournament are Isabelle Mercier, Baard Dahl and Martin de Knijff.

Just before the dinner break, stand out Xuyen Pham took a massive pot off her neighbor. After raising pre-flop to around 900 with AKo, the guy net to her pushed all in for about 7000. Everybody else folded around to Pham who considered her play for a few moments. She had the guy covered by nearly three times and finally decided to call. Her opponent flipped up 68o. Pham flopped two aces. Her opponent had four outs with a gut shot straight draw on the river, but his seven didn't come.


Pham, Queen of the Chip Stack

The top eighteen players will get paid tomorrow. We're expecting to get down to the final 20 or so by close of business at 4am.

I'll be back in a bit with another update.