Allen, Aaron and Sabyl

Stacks continue to consolidate, with some players now possessing more than 1,000,000 in chips. Players are dropping far faster than tournament organizers expected. At last count, 255 players remained. The plan for the day was to play to 300. We could still have another 5 or 6 hours of poker ahead of us.

What’s most notable right now is that the big names are either treading water or sinking. David Chiu, who was among the chips leaders for almost a full day, lost almost all of his 700k stack. At one point he was under 100,000 chips, but bounced back to 300k.

Allen Cunningham never got his stack past the half million point and is now just over 300,000. Allen looked tired, and in the time I watched he surrendered two pots to his opponent’s bets.

Then Allen got moved to a new table. Almost immediately he was in a big pot. In he the small blind after two limpers. Allen called off all but 100k of his chips on the turn. He checked down the river, and took the pot with K-3 and top pair. After the hand, a New Yorker at the table turned to the man who was bluffing and said with clear annoyance, “Do you mind not giving chips to the one guy who’s going to kill us?”

Aaron Bartley has failed to add to his stack, and his genial nature seems to have mellowed. He’s quiet and seems (quite understandably) tired.

And then there is Sabyl Cohen. She qualified through Full Tilt and has been steadily building her stack. She seems tight but tough. On two occasions I saw as she made a message clear: my blinds are not hear for stealing; raise on the button at your own risk.

Sabyl is just on of the names that are ascending—a name that may be known to all of America if things go well over the next few days.