Eight remained and Santerne grew short again. Making his move pre-flop from early position with king-queen of hearts, He was called by a fellow short stack, Bert Stevens, holding a marginally stronger hand. The United Kingdom player, known to millions of poker fans as ‘girafganger7’ had the best of it with ace-queen and held, the French player Santerne sliding out of contention in eighth for $52,745. 

German player Benjamin Rolle cashed in seventh place for $67,539. He was down to just over ten big blinds with king-jack offsuit and shoved on a pot raised by Bert from middle position. Stevens called with ace-jack and a board of A-5-4-A-8 saw ‘girafganger7’ win big. As Jeff Gross and special guest co-commentator, WPT champion and TV writer extraordinaire Matt Salsberg, called the action, Salsberg said “Bert’s run up quite a stack from crumbs, this is interesting. When you go from 600k to 4 million, your adrenaline means you can get spewy. You get overly confident gain and run into it.”

Gross agreed as the next hand saw Stevens give some back with queen-jack suited to Slowsby’s pocket aces. Stevens had solidified his stack, however, and only Slowsby remained ahead of him. The British player would take out the next opponent too, Dominguez shoving with ace-nine and Stevens calling it off with pocket queens. 

“It must be nice!” eulogised Salsberg. “He’s getting a premium every three hands.” 

Those queens held, and a jack-high board send the Spanish player Dominguez home for a score of $86,482. The hand put Stevens just a three-bet off the lead, a stunning show from the player who had begun with a stack just one eighth the size of the chip leader. 

It was nearly an hour before the next person, Chinese player ‘Waylan’, busted, and again it was Stevens who struck the fatal blow. All-in with ace-five, ‘Waylan’ saw Stevens call with ace-jack. The board ran out 8-2-2-K-6 sending the Chinese player home, and Stevens became chip leader as ‘Waylan’ cashed for $110,739.