Well here we are folks – out of the 701 runners we are down to our final 8:

Andrew Pantling         2,286,000

Lee Brooke-Pearce      998,000

Atanas Gueorguiev     990,000

Christer Johansson     755,000

Kara Scott                     701,000

William Kassouf         569,000

Andy Bradshaw         351,000

Bradley Verburg         217,000

Canadian Andrew Pantling has been our chip leader for the last two
days and showed no signs of relinquishing his monster lead early doors.

Action has been fast and furious and we lost two players in the first orbit of the table.

First to go was Brit Andy Bradshaw who took down the first pot with
Ace Jack. After looking down to see Ace Queen on the very next hand
Andy raised again 124,000 total (with blinds at 12,000/24,000) only to
see Bulagrian Atanas Gueorguiev shove all-in over the top.

Andy snap called and was understandably dismayed to see Atanas flip
over Pocket Kings. There was no help for the friendly Northerner on the
flop, turn or river and he was out in eighth place – still €56,000
should take the edge off a little.

Bradley Verburg was next to go – his all-in shove with Ace Two
called by chip leader Pantling holding the mighty King Jack. A Jack on
the flop put Pantling in front and no Ace come the river saw Bradley
out in seventh for €74,000 for his four days work.

William Kassouf was next to fall to a spot of cold decking; after
Atanas’ under-the-gun raise William shoved with Pocket Jacks only to
see Atanas snap call with Pocket Queens. Despite turning an open-ended
straight draw a blank on the river saw him out in 6th with €100,900 as
recompense.

After being crippled losing a huge pot when his Pocket Jacks were
out-flopped by the King Queen of Christer Johansson, Englishman Lee
Brooke-Pearce was left with just a bowl of rice that he shipped on the
next hand. Unfortunately his Eight Five of diamonds was no match for
the King Ten of Andrew Pantling and Lee was out in fifth for €130,600.

Some stellar play on the part of the lovely Kara Scott has seen here edge into the chip lead as we take a break:

Kara Scott: 1,996,000

Andrew Pantling: 1,989,000

Christer Johansson: 1,407,000

Atanas Gueorguiev: 1,626,000

Unfortunately being as my flight is in a couple of hours I’ll leave you in the capable hands of the Paddy Power blogging teamand the live feed for all your action updates.

Unabomber Caught

After days of patient stalking I tracked down Phil ‘the unabomber’
Laak for an interview – I sneakily waited until he was getting his
portrait done and couldn’t escape my clutches .

Stalking the Unabomber

As well as revealing his Irish heritage (he has dual citizenship) he
revealed that he is a bit of a space cadet (his words, not mine) and an
all-round off the wall kinda guy. We talked about Polaris and he openly
admitted that he’d play poker in a cave in Outer Mongolia if that’s
where the action was.

Well after an excellent weekend of poker I’ll be returning to sunny
Wales with my interviewage where I’ll be spending the rest of the week
glued to my computer working.

Stay tuned – I’ll keep you posted with my progress and let you know when and where my features will be appearing.