As it always has to, the bubble is burst, but this one popped in slightly peculiar fashion. First things first, the unlucky man is Piragibe Lindolfo Ataide, who has played for two days, came close to the chip lead at some time yesterday, but is now starting his journey home with nothing.

Here's how it played out.

After about 40 minutes of to-ing and fro-ing -- the usual hand-for-hand stuff around bubble time -- Piragibe, with one of the small stacks, flat called from the button. The big blind was one of the chip leaders, Juan Carlos Burguillos, from Venezuela. He checked his option.

The flop was a pretty innocuous-seeming 2h-3s-6d and no one seemed interested. They both checked and the 8s fell on the turn. Now they perked up. Burguillos bet 3,000 and Piragibe insta-called. It seemed suspicious, but who was trapping who?

Burguillos now took the lead and announced all-in in the dark before the river was out. That, of course, actually put Piragibe all in, and facing a decision for his tournament life. And he took a while to make it -- as well he might -- going into the tank for one minute, two minutes, three, four, five...

Eventually, Burguillos, who had already started pacing, asked for the clock and Piragibe had a minute left. With about five seconds left, he surprised all the assembled masses -- now close to about a million people -- by announcing "Call."

"Two pair! Two pair!" shouted Burguillos and flipped 8-2 for, indeed, two pair. Piragibe could barely bring himself to flip his ace-eight, for a dominating hand that came to be dominated. And that was that.

We have now redrawn and are down to four tables of eight. They're all in the money, but spare a thought for Piragibe...

Selected chip counts can be found HERE

A reminder of what they're playing for can be found HERE

And full video coverage can be found over at PokerStars.tv