Posted by Andrew Feldman
6:40 p.m. ET: Eerily similar to last year, we're down to our final two tables rather quickly. I left off my
last blog at 21 players. Since that post nearly 45 minutes ago, we've lost Jonathan Tamayo, who was eliminated by Eric Buchman. Tamayo put all his chips in the middle ($3 million) with A-Q and faced off against Buchman's K-K. Tamayo hit a queen, but that was it and he was eliminated in 21st place. The feature table saw the other elimination in spectacular form. As if you had any doubt, Nick Maimone was on the winning end, this time hitting quad kings to eliminate George Caragiorgas. Maimone flopped top set, but had a small sweat when the hands were shown postflop. Caragiorgas had Qh-Jh for a flush draw, but another king on the turn ended Caragiorgas' tournament.
Our big-money bubble boy was Tommy Vedes, who missed out on an additional $147,000 that the final 18 will receive. Vedes was eliminated on one of the outer tables by Buchman, who flopped a set of sevens versus Vedes' set of threes.
Ivey's downward swing continued during the first hour of Level 31. He's currently at $5.4 million.
The clock has been stopped as players redraw for tables. Ivey isn't moving tables, but joining him at the feature table is Steve Begleiter and his loud "Begs! Begs! Begs!" fans, Joe Cada, Antoine Saout, James Akenhead, Jamie Robbins, Ian Tavelli, Eric Buchman and Maimone.
The payout for 27th through 19th was $352,832 and jumps to at least $500,557 for the remaining 18.
Here are the chip leaders:
Billy Kopp: $26.2 million
Darvin Moon $17.8 million
Steven Begleiter $16.8 million
Eric Buchman $16.0 million
Kevin Schaffel $12.3 million
Small blinds: I think the crowd is getting behind Joe Cada. … Jordan Smith wished all the players good luck as he headed out to the secondary feature table. … Ivey went over to talk to the Humphreys during the delay. … Maimone is all smiles right now. He has now moved to Ivey's right after being in Ivey's big blind since the start of the day. … Logo breakdown: PokerStars (2), Full Tilt (4), Everest Poker (1), Ultimate Bet (1), no logo (1). I thought there was a logo rule that no more than three players could wear gear from the same site.
Poker
