With the blinds and antes escalating, Eugene Katchalov made his last stand and was unable to muster a double up. Paul Phua limped from early position, and Katchalov moved in for 110,000 total. When action got back to Phua, he slammed a stack of brown 25k chips into the pot with the quickness.
Katchalov was well behind holding , against Phua's . As a few at the table noted however, Katchalov doesn't lose these. The flop gave Katchalov some backdoor help, dropping down . The turn card got him Katchalov even closer, and he joked to Phua "it'll be this much," pointing to his 110,000 stack.
Surprise, surprise though it wasn't meant to be, with the hitting on the river, giving Phua's ace-high the win and Katchalov's remaining stack.
The first hand we saw at the secondary table during this latest trip saw about 40,000 in the pot preflop, and the board reading . David Benyamine tossed out a 25,000 chip from the small blind, and Sam Trickett decided it was worth considerably more to him making it 58,000 total. This sent Benyamine into the tank as he counted out his chips behind, a total of 161,000. With five seconds left to act he tossed in his time bank chip, to get himself an additional thirty seconds. It didn't help, and he mucked.
The next hand Benyamine decided to try to get that 25,000 back. Paul Phua limped, followed by Annette Obrestad, and then Wang Qiang bumped it up to 26,000 straight. No tank time was needed on this hand for Benyamine, and he fired in his 161,000 instantly into the pot. The folds that followed happened almost as quickly.
It was folded to Erik Seidel who made it 20,000 to go. From the button, Chris Ferguson gave it a bit of thought before moving all of his chips in the middle. The blinds released and the action was on Seidel again.
"How much," Seidel asked. The dealer counted out 102,500. Seidel made the call and turned over to Ferguson's .
The flop came down giving Ferguson trips. The turn brought the and the river the and Ferguson doubled to 205,000.