Michael Wong is smiling. But really, after what's happened to him today, few could blame him for being crouched in the corner, head in hands, cheeks moistened by torrents of tears and a mutilated effigy of the poker gods kicked into the trash.

The PokerStars qualifier from San Diego, California, hit a flop on the second hand of today. He hit it pretty good. He had 3-4, that flop was 5-6-7 and there was nothing wrong with getting it all in there. Problem: his opponent had limped to the same flop with 8-9, otherwise known as the nuts.

"I lost three quarters of my stack," Wong confided. "I'm the short stack now."

It's merciful that he had such a lot of chips to begin today. He was the top-ranked PokerStars qualifier overnight with 193,000. Now he's down to about 50,000.

But, by his own admission, he went on a rush yesterday to get himself near the chip lead, and there's still every chance something similar could happen again.

Update: And if a picture is worth a thousand words, here's "War and Peace" courtesy of Neil Stoddart, peerless PokerStars photographer, who captured it all going wrong for Wong.