Balancing on the Bubble: The Action Which Brought Us Here

Chip counts from the last break:

Ramsey Ajram 455200
Martin Silke 422700
Jamie Brown 324900
Samuel benjamin Oatley 323300
Luke Trotman 246500
Charles Chattha 218600
Tore Lagerborg 204000
Sunny Chattha 199800
Matthaios Armeftis 157800
David Colclough 150300
Jan Lundberg 147900
Cuong Tran 120300
Joshua Gould 117200
Donal Norton 115900
Christer Bjorin 113300
Tony Dobson 111900
John Baughman 108800
Simon Eastwood 105000
Cathair Conneely 104700
Kevin Jenkins 97100
James Renehan 92800
Erik Backlund 90700
Man Chan 90700
Warren Wooldridge 85100
David Penly 75000
Vik Kanwar 73800
Sami Yusuf 64700
Julien Legros 63500
Michael Tse 57300
Gino Desiena 56300
Hoi Chow 54300
Trevor Reardon 51900
Paul Kerr 47400
Yin Li 43500
Andreas Hagen 42100

Well we're already down to just 33 players here at the GUKPT Vic Main Event, but only 32 get paid. That is known in poker terminology as The Bubble. While Homer tenaciously rails to see who the unlucky 33rd place finisher will be, I bring you some key hands which saw players take shots at doubling up or going home:

The biggest pot without a doubt has gone to Tore Lagerborg, who's been dancing with in-position Jamie Brown for a while. A few hands earlier, Lagerborg had raised to 15k preflop only to be reraised to 41,200 (precisely) by Brown; he instapassed. This time he raised to 15k, was repopped and shipped it all in - called by Brown holding Ac-Kc. Lagerborg's Kd-Ks hit the Q-K-A flop harder than Brown, and although an Ace would have sneaked victory, the Kings held and gave the Norwegian a stack of around 300k - right up there with the leaders.

Dave Penly also doubled up short stack Trevor Reardon (that's mainly what he's done today, double short stacks) with Eights coming up short against Queens.

Both Andreas Hagen and Chris Bjorin have been taking turns shoving when it passes to them in the sb, with the result that they're still in, but undoubled.

Sunny raises in late position and finds short stacked Gino Desiena moving in next to him (the cutoff). Although it's just 29k to call, he hesitates, clearly having raised with air and unhappy about the odds the pot is giving him to take a shot. He takes it - with Qc-6c, and Desiena tables As-Ks, expressing horror at Sunny's raising range. The flop is an emphatic K-J-K-J-Q and Desiena doubles up, letting the table know once again, "He is calling me Queen-Six!!"