Update: A Slide and a Climb

UPDATE:  10:50PM

Jamie Gold is surging this night.  When Johnny Chan has you cornered in the hallway trying to convince you to wear ChanPoker stuff, you know it’s been a good day.  He has the chiplead at $6.7MM with 49 players remaining.  Eric Freiberg is 2nd with $5.9M and ten players have $2.5MM or more.  Chip average is at $1.78MM, and they’re supposed to play down to 45 by the end of tonight.  Look for some great stuff to come up soon.

UPDATE: 5:50PM

Allen Cunningham has doubled up, and we’re down to 73 players. Chip average sits at $1.19M. One more bustout brings the payout to $90,713, so this might actually slow down a bit. Maybe.
UPDATE: 4:50PM

Down to 81 players, so the exodus continues unabated. We’re closing on half gone from the original 135, and the notables include Annie Duke and Matt Wilson (the youngster who brutally crippled Jason Strasser). Allen Cunningham still hanging in now at $900k and Humberto Brenes has slipped to $480k. Their are four around $3M or above: Lee Kort ($3.3M), Michael Binger ($3.2M), Jamie Gold ($3.2M), and Paul Wasicka ($3.0M).

New red chips in play ($25k), and blinds now move up to $10k/20k with $3k blinds. 6 have an M<5, 18<10, and 15 <15. No big monster moves as of yet. Three more levels might get us down to an incredible 40 or 50 players left. Payouts jump to $67,973 then up to $90,713 at 71st. 63rd gets $123,699 and 54th takes $164,932 for those keeping score at home. Will that slow things down? Possible, but I think the only way to slow things down would be to let players deal.
UPDATE: 3:05 PM

Jamie Gold hasn’t handled his chip lead very well, doubling up two small stacks with marginal hands. He’s been moved to the feature table, and Humberto Brenes’ table is headed elsewhere. With that, a new chip leaders has emerged: Lee Kort.

Kort has moved up $2MM on the day so far on a fairly tight table. He’s had the nuts a couple times, which is a nice thing to have.

Clothing change request at the last minute (someone didn’t figure out that all players wearing khaki isn’t great television).

Kyle Bowker, solidly at $2.2M. His table has some chips. Phil Hellmuth busted from another tourney and walked through. Allen Cunningham hanging strong at $860k.