A few nuggets of information from the tournament floor.
Firstly, the PokerStars ShootingStar Benjamin Kang has made a great start here on home soil. He found kings against jacks and the better hand stood up after they got it all in pre-flop. Kang has more than 20,000 and is attracting significant attention from the rail-birds.
As does an as-yet unknown player on the table formerly occupied by Michael Tureniec. The Swede, who was runner up in London and also made the final table at the Aussie Millions in January, was one of the very early fallers here, also running jacks into kings. That hand played slightly strangely: there were five limpers to Tureniec in the small blind, and he made it 900 with the jacks. Three of the limpers got out the way, and then the player in the cut off made it 3,100. Tureniec ruled out the possibility of a big pocket pair based on the limp, and so moved all in. But that read was wrong: the player flipped those kings and that was that.
Barny Boatman, who also made the final table in Melbourne in January, is faring slightly better. He swung by during the recent break to reveal that he was up to 15,000. Boatman has shown some decent form lately, and most folk would be delighted to see him go deep in an EPT.
