If you're going to have only three chips, it's as well to make sure they're either grey or green. The grey chip, worth 5,000, didn't feature on day 1A and confused counters when it appeared in starting stacks this afternoon. On the first sweep of the room it seemed as though numerous players had lost half of their 10,000 allocation on the first hand.
Anyway, back to that grey chip/green chip combination. That's what Peter Eastgate had in front of him at the start of level five. He had one grey and two greens, making it 7,000 for the World Champion. Blinds at this stage are 150-300, so plenty of play remains.
Eastgate is next to Salvatore Bonavena, the EPT Prague champion. He too hasn't had it all his own way today and had chipped down to less than 4,000 at the half-way point of the day. Better news for another short stack at the table - the PokerStars qualifier Darren Woods from the United States - who doubled up with aces against the queens of Massou Cohen.
"If I hadn't have lost so much, I could have doubled up even more," Woods said, finding the cloud around the silver lining as he stacked his newly-refreshed 8,000 or so.
At time of writing, 243 players remain from today's 343. I make that 100 departures so far.
From the "Er, forget that" department: Julian Thew is out, whatever might have been written below. Bruno Fitoussi has also gone.
