The final table commenced in somewhat cagey fashion. Lots of $s and of course the not insignificant matter of a gold WSOP bracelet no doubt contributed to this, but there has been one player in particular who has had no problem upping his aggression levels.

Ca-sey's Red (Out - 10th)

Busto!

Yes after what has proved a nightmare start for the lone Canadian at the table, he has been put out of his misery.

With only a mere $65,000 or so, he took an opportunity to s**t ot bust with A-Q, flipping them against the preflop raiser, Californian Mike Shwartz's pocket Eights.

He couldn't find the A or Q he needed for a much required double through, meaning he hits the rail, picking up $7,507 for his two days work.

Good game Casey.

Surg-ing Upwards

The elimination of the sole Canadian means the bracelet is being contended by eight Americans and one sole Russian.

Sergey Rybachenko is showing no signs of being overawed however, outnumbered as he is in this microcosmic cold war, and indeed it is he who is freezing the rest of the table out at present.

His opponent's will have to give some thaw-t as to how to stop the bulldozing Russian, who's stack is now in excess of $2,000,000 after picking up some small pots.

Welcome back for the $1,500 Shootout, where the finest (well run best-est) sit-n-go specialists have been run through the crucible of consecutive single tables, and have been distilled down to the final few souls who succeded in winning back to back single tables yesterday.

Here are the chosen few returning to do battle today as the race for the bracelet gathers pace.

Seat 1: Casey Coleman (Kingston, Ontario, Canada)
Seat 2: Matthew Giannetti (Las Vegas, Nevada)
Seat 3: Thomas West (Los Altos, California)
Seat 4: Rory Monahan (Carbondale, Illinois)
Seat 5: Kyle Bowker (Walton, New York)
Seat 6: John Strzemp III (Las Vegas, Nevada)
Seat 7: Mike Schwartz (Encino, California)
Seat 8: Sergey Rybachenko (Moscow, Russian Federation)
Seat 9: Jason Young (Suffern, New York)
Seat 10: Alexander Triner (Rockville, Maryland)

Incidentally the players have been given 1,000,000 chips each to play with today.

Casey-Ra Sera

Gianetti - At Home Here In Vegas

Casey Coleman has been the story of the first hour, the Canadian getting involved in some monster pots, with invariably disastrous results.

First off he fired a big bet on the river of a Queen high board. He almost, but not quite persuaded Matthew Gianetti to fold his hand, which was TPTK in the form of A-Q, but a call from the Las Vegan local boosted his stack up to the $1,500,000 mark, whilst Coleman was knocked back down to $500,000.

Nice Chenk 'O Change

Worse was to follow for Coleman. Seeing a flop of K 4 5 after a re-raised pot preflop, he fired out $250,000 - an enormous bet.

Slow Start For Bowker

His Russian opponent, Sergey Rybachenko, who had followed him into the pot made the call..

The turn was the 5.

Check from both players.

The river fell the 7 and now the Russian bet out $375,000...called by Coleman pretty quickly.

Coleman flipped up A-K for Kings Up, but the Russian had been incredibly lucky, tabling 8 6. He had called the flop with a gutshot and fotunately hit it on the river but his luck means he is up to close to the $2,000,000 mark, good for the chip lead at this stage, whilst Coleman is down and almost out on $115,000.

Poor Guy!