WSOP Main Event: If a butterfly flaps its wings...

The table chat was driving him nuts so Emad dashed to his room at the dinner break and with his iPod attached, feels less like he's playing in a cageful of canaries.

Tonight he's concentrating on getting his stack back up where it should be, after reducing it by three-quarters on what he admitted was a crazy bluff.

"I don't like to look back on what might have happened if I hadn't done that, if I might have had 40k by now. Who knows? I believe in chaos theory."

He had a better appetite for supper, having doubled through just before the break, against the player who rivered a flush against him earlier.

Emad limped from second position with pocket 8's and when the flop came J 4 4, bet 600 and found a caller.

He made a boat when the turn card brought an 8 , and just checked, hoping the other guy had something worth betting.

And it worked, as his opponent bet out 1 000k. Emad called, and when the river came another 4, he pushed all in for his last 5k.

His opponent couldn't get his chips in fast enough, as he was holding pocket QQ, but Emad's higher full house took the pot and put him right back where he started, all those hours ago, on 10k.

And when I checked a few minutes ago he'd turned that into 18k, after taking down a few pots with pre-flop raises with AK and AQ, and taking 3k with a hand he couldn't describe in front of the others.

From a conversation I just overheard, it seems like a little fatigue, and a lot of computing power players are devoting to their game, is hurting their ability to do a simple sum.

A tournament official wandered past as I was watching Emad's table, so I asked her what they would do if the field wasn't whittled down to 900, as planned, by Level 6. She said they'd have to play on.

"How many, 900? asked one of American players. "That's right" said the guy to his side. "So, how many tables is that? he wanted to know. A heavily pregnant pause before his answer, "90?"

Update: 10:30

Well it's not good news. I went back to Table 123 to check up on Emad and found him staring gloomily at a tiny heap of chips, 1675.

So what on earth had happened? He got them all in pre-flop with AK in the cut-off.

"I'd raised this guy five or six times before. He made it 1000k and it was folded round to me so I raised it up to 3500. He re-raised me another 3500k, with 9k behind, so I pushed all in for 12k and he called."

The other player turned over a pocket pair of sixes.

The flop came 10 2 3....and then the turn brought a six. He was drawing dead, and so upset he didn't even see what was on the river.

"I can understand him calling my first raise, because he was annoyed with me stealing blinds. But to go all in with 66?"

To make it worse, players were then sent on a 20 minute break and Emad had to stew over the play, knowing he was coming back with a mountain to climb.

With the blinds up to 150-300 he was going all in at the first opportunity, and as I watched, decided KhQh was the hand.

He was called by Ad9c and stood up to watch the flop come down..8d 2d Jc..the turn was a 9d and the river no help, 5h, sending him out on Day 1 of his first WSOP Main Event.

Emad is a gracious, good-humoured guy, with an ability already proven by his 7th place finish in the $5 000 Pot Limit Hold'Em.

His demeanour didn't slip for a second. He wished all the other players good luck and wandered off the floor, telling me he was thinking about entering a tournament tomorrow.