Well, it would be nice to report a rush of eliminations, the foundation of a final table, and my fingers hovvering over the keys labelled G-O-O-D-N-I-G-H-T. But the truth is something different.

Although we're now down to 11 players, having waved goodbye to Tony Cascarino, David Obrobac and Surinder Sunar, they've been trickling out the door rather than rushing. That's understandable, of course, because we're playing for more than half a million pounds. But in contrast to the boom and bust of yesterday, this has been very slow progress.

One man not complaining, however, is Joseph Mouawad, the PokerStars qualifier from Lebanon, who was responsible for the most recent two eliminations. Both were from the feature table and both were of exceptionally dangerous players.

Mouawad first took his pocket queens up against the A-K of Obrobac and survived a flush draw on the flop to take out the young Swede.

He then accounted for Surinder Sunar, the overnight chip leader, who had been bleeding chips for most of the day and then moved all-in pre-flop with queen-ten. Mouawad had pocket sevens, made the call, and the best hand stayed that way, despite Surinder picking up myriad outs on the J-J-A 9 board. The 5 on the river was not one of them.

Joseph has now quietly assumed the chip lead - another PokerStars qualifier tearing up a major tournament field.

Here are the latest counts of the featured table players:

Joseph Mouawad - Lebanon - 707,000 (PokerStars qualifier)
Jason Hackett - England - 146,000
Fredrik Haugen - Sweden - 201,000 (PokerStars qualifier)
Marcel Baran - Germany - 599,000 (PokerStars qualifier)
Ian Cox - England - 157,000

Out on the other table, things aren't quite so clear for the chip counters. But Florian Langmann, Josh Egan (PokerStars qualifier) and Anthony Lellouche are still the big stacks, with Paul Mendes, Phidias Georgiou (PokerStars qualifier) and Pascal Perrault slightly shorter.