Big pots draw big crowds, even in this relatively early stage of the tournament. And it's always amusing, for the railbirds at least, to see a player turn over a hand like 5c-7c when they've just shoved their entire stack -- of close to 13,000 -- in the middle.

In this case, there was good reason. Just. A flop showed Kc-2c-9h and it was heads up. Peter Dalhuijsen, from Holland, had obviously sensed some kind of weakness from his adversary and moved in with his bottom-of-the-barrel flush draw.

It looked to be a fine move: Douglas Champie, PokerStars qualifier from the United States, had to think for nearly five minutes, running through the possible hands that he might be up against. "Aces?" he muttered, before calling with K-J for top pair.

That's when he saw the flush draw, and he dodged the two bullets on the turn and river to knock out Mr 5-7.

"I only played one qualifier," he told me as he stacked his 28,000 chips. He could take it a long way.

Meanwhile, Patrick Antonius, who made his first real splash on the live circuit with a third place here in season two, just doubled up courtesy of a total cold deck. Antonius had 10-J, his opponent K-Q and the board was K-Q-9. Enough said.

Elsewhere, Johnny Chan is not content with hogging somewhere near the chip lead. He's also looking for some side action and has found a customer in Sorel Mizzi. According to reliable sources, they're betting &euro1,000 on each flop: if it's mainly black, Chan gets it. If it's mainly red, it goes to Mizzi.

After the first hand was taken down by a pre-flop raise, thwarting the gamblers, Chan ended up calling another raiser the next time with 10-9 of diamonds. Not only did a 10 flop, earning the real pot for Chan, but he also took the prop bet as black outnumbered red on the board.

Mizzi looked on as Chan explained his dubious call: "I had two red cards!" he said.