Helder Holds Onto Lead

It has been a relatively quiet couple of orbits, with most hands ending with preflop raises or the occasional three-bet and players acting with a great deal of deliberation.

In one recent hand, Ryan Van Sanford raises to 50,000, Farhan Madhani calls from a couple of seats over in the cutoff, then the table’s short stack, Corey Hochman, thinks for two full minutes before calling as well from the button.  (Hochman did earlier shove all in over the top of a Van Sanford open, getting a fold.)

The action moves to chip leader Jason Helder in the big blind who pushes out a reraise to 185,000, and his three opponents take their time as they successively let go of their hands.  

Helder has added further to his pace-setting stack, now over 3.7 million. Meanwhile Hochman, Saied Zamiri, and Andrew Ziskin are the short stacks hovering around or below 500,000.