Good afternoon and welcome to the eerily sunny interior of the Fox Club. Never mind the glorious weather outside, in here with the climate control is where it’s at, and the club is slowly but surely filling with poker players milling around and staring hungrily at the stacks of chips being laid out on the tables.

A total of 104 players competed; of them 50 remain. Chip leader right now is Rahim Tadj-Saadat on 106,450; just a shade behind him and presumably finding it a breeze is Zephyr Peling on 105,275. They are the only two gents over the 100,000 mark.

Still in with a shot are Hendon Mobster Joe Beevers (41,625), PKR Live VI runner up Kevin Ayow (66,375), popular regulars Danny Laming and Jon Omara, WSOPE finalist Neil Suarez and legendary poker blogger Marc Convey.

Play has been pushed back to 2.30pm for reasons that are unclear; never mind! Time to make it to the bar before kickoff.

Blinds are 500/1,000 with a 50 ante for the next 45 minutes. Shuffle up and deal.

Peter Luckraft opened to 3,325 in the hijack and The Bui called in the cutoff. They saw a flop – .

Luckraft checked to Bui who bet 3,350, but Luckraft now check-raised to 8,300. Back to Bui who went all in for a little over 35,000, and after a few minutes’ deliberation it proved too much for Luckraft who folded and turned his gaze up to the cricket on the TV screen, as if seeking approval for the fold from the Sri Lankan national team.

Bui is buoyed up to around 50,000 by that; no such luck for Luckraft, who is down to 40,000 or so.

Leng Ong has hit the rail. The precise manner of his demise will remains a mystery, but his whole stack was carried off by giganto-stack Zephyr Peling.

Here’s a thing you don’t see very often – James Price completely silent and entirely uninvolved in any conversation. The reason – he’d raised from the cutoff but faced a hefty reraise from Danny Laming in the small blind. After some astoundingly un-vocal deliberation, Price folded and dropped to 35,000. Laming meanwhile is doing exactly twice as well, on 70,000.

“F***ing hell,” Jon Omara announced to nobody in particular; he then turned his attention to the dealer, whose fault it was not: “All you have to do is brick the river.”

Tamer Kamel had been all in with against Omara’s ; it had all been OK right up until the river of the board. Omara continued with the “F***ing hell”s for a while but it did him no good – he’s down to 44,000 while Kamel has a bit of fat stored up now in the shape of a brand new respectable 38,000 stack.

Our start-of-day chip leaders have only exapnded on their already hefty six-figure stacks so far today, and both are now way over the 100k mark.

At one end of the room, official chip leader at the start of play Rahim Tadj-Saadat was betting out 9,500 on a flop when I got there. On the button, Gianpaolo Bini flat called. They both checked the on the turn and proceeded directly to the river. Bini turned over for an up-and-down on the flop that had never got there but made two pair, aces and eights, on the river. Tadj-Saadat, however, flipped for a flush draw that hadn’t come in either, but had made trips along the way. Bini dropped to 55,000; Tadj-Saadat is now at around 150,000.

Meanwhile a few tables along Zephyr Peling is enjoying similar good fortunes. I only caught a smaller pot with him – Peling betting 5,500 on the turn of a board and getting a call from Hakim Bouzroura before they both checked the river – but at the end of it, Peling was up to 145,000 when his for top pair turned out to be good.