Grand Prix De Paris: Final Table - Interactive

[Gobbomom]

good luck to everyone of course, but special good vibes wished towards Will Ma from 2+2.

[stewart]

wd to the final 9 carnt be easy playing over so many days carnt get a head of steam up

[snoopy1239]

After a traffic-frenzied taxi journey here to the Aviation Club, we've just about made it in time.

"Shuffle Up and deal!"

[snoopy1239]

And according to the Rocket Man himself... Aces first hand, takes the blinds uncontested.

[Djinn]

We've just kicked off here, with the last 10 minutes of the blinds being 3k/6k.  They've coloured up overnight - pictures of the new improved stacks (and plaques!) soon...

Will Ma arrived ever so slightly late, missing one hand before bounding over the ropes...

We arrived in the nick of time, having taken a taxi out of laziness and respect for today's earlier start, which took twice as long as walking it...

[Djinn]

Chip Race!  They have no more need of the 500 chips now, and so off they go.  Pictured is chip leader Will Ma with a nice stack of those blue 25k plaques.  Traditionally every year there's one red 100k plaque which is of an even more ludicrous size, but this year we've looked for it in vain...ah well.

[Tonji]

  to Mr Ram & Mr Gourlay

[snoopy1239]

And just like that (hmm, Tommy Cooper?), we have a double up.

All-in pre-flop, Jeff Wallace's is swiftly called by Jeff Lisandro and his leading , but, and most likely to the chagrin of Rocket Man, the first card out was a King, follwed by a rainbow 3-4-4-9 board.

Double up for the American, still on 9.

[snoopy1239]

Final table piccies...

[Djinn]

15 cagey minutes later, I swap back off with Snoopy... we have great final table hovering access, btw - the scarcity of journalists and the lack of TV paraphernalia means that we can actually see everything that goes on.  Oh, the luxury...

Ram Vaswani, Jeff Lisandro and Yuri Kerzhapkin take down some little pots preflop, the latter, however, pushing in pre over the top of a 25k raise from David Redlin to add a few extra.  He also checked an entire board down with big blind caller of his 25k button raise Runar Runarsson, winning with Ace-high.  If that doesn't sound like enough action to you -

Paul Gourlay limps in early position, the button and small blind join the party and big blind Jeff Lisandro checks. 
Flop:  .  Lisandro bets out 25k, only to find Paul moving in straight away and springing up from his seat like someone had put something pointy on it.  It's 83k more to Lisandro (pictured left next to David Redlin)...who passes, saying, "Got any of that?" in a tone which implied skepticism.  Paul only shows him the .

[snoopy1239]

Action is a bit lacking at the moment, most the hands being taken pre-flop, the big boys taking it in turns to take the blinds, although the last time Jeff did show Aces.

[EricLarch]

Please send my best wishes to Yuri from Eric! (I was playing on his table on day 1B). He doesn't speak a lot, but he is a very nice guy once you get to know him! So go go go mate!!!

[snoopy1239]

Apparently, Paul 'Rocket Man' Gourlay flopped a set of sevens early doors but couldn't find a customer.

Oh well, important thing is that he is still in his seat.

[besty]

I'm one of rocketmans best friends... go on ging gang gourlay, you can do it mate... slithergadee is routing for you.

[kenjude]

Can someone explain this "WPT speeding the clock for the final table"?

Why would they need to do that for a show that's recorded (other than for the obvious reducing the amount of time paid to crews)?

And more importantly, that's surely within the players' ability to do something about. No players = no show to sell to a TV network.

Just as with sport, TV controlling the structure of events is not healthy in my opinion. They don't even have the excuse of trying to fit it in to a live broadcast.