Belgium's Cheng-Wei Yin is by far the chip leader sitting on a stack of 270,000 chips. However, he says he hasn't done anything special to get there.
When speaking to him, it was just after him losing a small hand, at least for his stack. Franck Lelong raised preflop to 2,500 chips from the cut-off. Yin then three bet the action to 7,500. Francois Hardel called from the small blind and Lelong also decided to stay in the action.
All players checked after the flop came out . However, when the came on the turn Hardel shoved all in for around 29,000 chips. Lelong folded after thinking for a minute, and Yin seemed to be internally debating what to do when he tanked for about 4 minutes before giving up on his hand.
Florian Decamps got his stack to around 90,000, but now has settled back down to around 55,000 after a couple of hands didn't go his way.
To start things off, Lithuania's Gytis Lazaninkas re-entered and quickly doubled up against Decamps when his outflipped Decamps' .
Another hand to bring Decamps back to earth was very unlucky for him as he raised the action with and player who is referred to as just "Mathieu" shoved all in with creating a pot of around 25,000. The flop appeared seemingly giving "Mathieu" just four outs to improve.
The came on the turn giving Decamps a full-house and erasing most of the outs his opponent needed for the straight. However, this also left his opponent one out for the straight flush which he nailed when the completed the board.
It seems like every time we saw Team Winamax member Davidi Kitai's table he was involved in a pot. Some say any two cards are good for Kitai. Unfortunately for him, his aggression didn't pay off today, although he will have plenty of more chances to build a stack tomorrow and Friday.
In his second bustout hand with blind, Kitai raised in late-position with against an early position limper to 2,400. His opponent called leading to a flop. The action was checked to Kitai who bet 2,400. His opponent check-raised to 6,500 which Kitai called.
The didn't complete Kitai's flush, but that didn't stop his aggression. His opponent led out with a bet of 8,000. Kitai shoved all in for about 40,000 which is opponent called and turned over for a set. Kitai was unable to improve when the hit the river sending him to the rail for the evening.
Late registration recently ended and we have 179 players in today's field of 13 shy of the 192 registered during Day 1a of last year's Main Event. Only 75 players remain and this number is expected to go down a bit further before the dinner break begins in a little more than 80 minutes.
Sofiene Belaid by far has the biggest stack with 180,000 chips or nine-times his starting stack. You would think he won a bunch of big pots, but Belaid implied that was not the case. He shared with us that he has done nothing special, but then added he "won a bunch of 40,000 chip pots" and busted six players."