Dinner break details

The players are taking their dinner break, which gives us the chance to catch up on a few newsworthy tid-bits that have otherwise gone unreported.

Xuyen "Bad Girl" Pham is now challenging for the chip lead. She has about 35,000, much of it thanks to what can only be described as an intruiging pre-flop call with the 8-6 of clubs. The flop of 8-8-6 makes that more telepathic than intriguing.

Don Protz, who is a PokerStars qualifier from Canada, is also right up there, sitting with approximately 36,000. His brother Doug also qualified and plays tomorrow. I was saving up their story for later, but now Don is making waves it has forced my hand. Photos and some more information to follow.

Gus Hansen, known as the Great Dane, is not going to win his home tournament. He had been scratching the felt for the best part of three hours and is now all in and all out - a rivered straight from his opponent accounting for the local boy.

Barny Boatman, on a rich vein of form after his fourth place finish in Dublin last week, is sitting pretty with 22,000+

Meanwhile, Julian Thew has been moved to Simon Young's table. "That's livened it up a bit," confessed the Suffolk Punch.

We're now entering level six, with the blinds shifting to 150-300 with a 25 running ante. We're playing another five levels, taking us to 3am local time. Ninety-four players remain of the 144 that started today.

Stay with us.