From this angle, you just can't tell how bad a day Isabelle Mercier is having. Here, she looks poised to crush the table. She looks like she could be ready to rip the throat from anyone who dares look at her chips. In fact, it has not been a good day for No Mercy. The cards have fell mercilessly. Despite an abundance of confidence, Mercier is having no luck in the early stages of the tournament.

Mercier, under the weight of bad luck

Indeed, the cards are not falling on the side of beauty. Cecilia Nordenstam, too, is sitting on a short stack and is in danger of busting. The only thing she could drag in front of her this afternoon was a bit of tapas.

She'd prefer chips to tapas, I'm sure

Still, if we want to look from different angles, we can still find stories of encouragement. For instance, atop a bald head we found the oddest of headphones. They are giant sonar balls that seems to atttact chips.

Underneath those headphones is the man they call Martin Wendt. With a mere stare and growl, he's crushed his opponents all afternoon long and amassed nearly 50,000 in chips.

Martin Wendt

Here are a couple of other folks who are styaing alive today.

Marcel Luske stares at his opponent before mucking. Good thing too, as his opponent showed pocket aces


Torstein Iverson


Erik Sagstrom

Players will be on dinner break for the next 90 minutes. Until then, here are the day's previous posts.

In case you missed it:

EPT Monte Carlo: Pre-game coverage

EPT Monte Carlo Day 1 begins--A photo gallery of poker faces from Day 1 and the story of FPP qualifer Kevin Tennant

Cruel for Bruel

Enough for de Knijff