 |
One and a half hours into the final round: 25 players left and an average chip stack of 448,000.
And in the need to know category:
At the end of the first complete hour of play, 31 players remain and the average chip stack stands at 361,290.
At 9:28 into the final round, the first “all in” goes out, leaving 39 players still remaining for the 21 million mile prize.
(7 of the first 8 “all-ins” doubled up, all short stack winners.
As noted earlier, the lowest chip stack to start the day was 62,000. The player to start with 63,000 said, “Ah, I was hoping to have the lowest chip total to start the day because I want to win and be the biggest rags to riches poker story ever.”
The Final 40 players begin play right at 10 a.m. with three players missing the first deal (two of them show up within 1:23 into play).
At 2:23 (two minutes and 23 seconds) into the final round, the first short stack is all in and wins. At 3:18 into the final round, the second short stack is all in and wins as well. The short stacks have doubled up so far.
And if you must know:
AND in case you think this is a casual play, one of the finalists showed up in a coat and tie. Now, when asking him why the dress up when everyone else is quite informal, he showed off his tie which was decorated with a rabbit coming out of a top hat and thus the reason for the suit and tie. He said, “I needed to pull a rabbit out of my hat to win this one.”
At 29:53 (twenty-nine minutes and fifty-three seconds) into hour number eight, player number 41 falls out and that leaves the final 40 for Saturday’s final round to play for 21 million miles. The average chip stack stands at 280,000 (for the card players out there, we leave off at Level 15).
Congrats to all the players who have made it this far for a chance to win these final prizes of the tournament:
The top 40 players – 50,000 bonus miles
As noted earlier, those who were knocked out on day one were entered into a drawing to play in a hotel sponsored tourney called Crazy Eights in which players could earn a grand prize of $20,000. This other tournament was for real money, none of this miles thing. So Continental picked 21 players at random to play. One of the players that OnePass sponsored for $500 actually played well enough to win second place and $10,000 in real money.
The applause gets louder. That can mean only one thing – we’re almost at the 40 player cut for the final round. As we start another hour of play with 41 players, the “blinds” are now 5,000 and 10,000 and the average chip stack is 273,170.
The reason that the applause gets louder for each player leaving the game is that the remaining players fully understand they are now one player away from surviving to a new day – when cards can change and luck may improve. Seven hours down today and many hope it’s just minutes to the end of the day. We’ll see.
Break time comes along and all the players head for the nearest bathroom. I head for the guy in front of all the chips. After all, he sees everything. Chatting with three of the dealers in this tournament reveals that all of them see dealing as a job. But … all of them are doing it for one particular reason – to be better card players and do better in tournaments. Yes, they do it to learn from the better card players they deal to in a typical day.
In an 8-hour shift, they may deal 110 to 120 hands and during that time really are able to pick up tips and best practices from the better players and as well, the worst practices from the ones they are no longer dealing to. Bet you didn’t know that.
At the end of six hours of playing, a much slower pace emerges as players really start to study both the cards AND those playing them. The chip stack sits at 238,297 with 45 players remaining.
If you must know, on the tables:
And you might find this interesting: a spectator of the tourney mentioned that while he believes in Divine Intervention and total randomness, he’s not convinced that there is such a thing as luck in playing cards.
