As the second day of the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Event begins, Isabelle Mercier is starting with a relatively short stack. However, she is determined to go much deeper in this event. I’ll post updates here throughout the day on how she is doing.

****Most recent updates at top****

11:50–Isabelle Mercier makes final nine of Event #9. More to follow.

10:30pm–Boy, when an opponent has pocket deuces to your pocket queens, a trey on the river looks scary as hell. Fortunately, the card had three spots instead of two. Isabelle just busted a short-stack and gave herself a little breathing room.

9:49pm–Still at 15 players as we go to a 15 minute break. Isabelle has 186,000 in chips. I’d say that puts her around the middle of the pack. My favorite line of the night comes from Marcel, who just told a player:

“You had three outs. (Points to deck) Two in there, (points at the door) and one right there.”

9:05pm–Down to 15 players and Isabelle is still one of them.

“I made a bad calll with the jacks,” she said. Even after doubling up, she was still kicking herself.

“Marcel said it was a beginners mistake.”

I started to protest and find a reason that the call wasn’t bad.

“I’m going to beat two people with jacks?” she said. “It was a bad call.”

Still, when it came time for the all-in with the A7, Isabelle thought back to the last year of bad beats. She took them so many times, but laid them on people so few times.

At the end of the table, a tattooed guy that sounds like he is from New York said what many people have thought over the years: “I like you’re style.”

8:45pm–And sometimes you just have to get lucky. Isabelle, in push or fold mode, decided to push with A7 suited in diamonds. Her opponent thought forever before calling with pocket kings. I can only assume the guy was trying to induce a bluff from Marcel Luske. Regardless, Isabelle needed some luck and she got it…all over the place. She flopped a seven, turned a seven, then rivered an ace for a full house. She has doubled up.

8:26pm–Jacks. I hate jacks. Now, so does Isabelle. She just ogt cust in half. A three-way hand that pitted her jacks against KQ and AA. The aces held and Isabelle is now in push or fold mode again.

8:17pm–Down to 22 players…one of whom seems less stressed now that she is playing:

7:43pm–We sat in the PokerStars suite waiting for the $5,000 event to come back from dinner. Isabelle was bouncing.

“I’m stressed.”

“You get stressed when you play?”

“I get stressed when I’m not playing.”

Coming back from dinner, Isabelle has an average stack of around $150,000. At this point though, the blinds are getting big enough that averaged doesn’t matter. Average means nothing. She has an M of about 6 or 7 right now.

Isabelle bounced out of the room.

“Time to go to work,” she said, and pulled her hat down over her eyes.

6:12pm–Just about time for dinner. As I came in to type, I’m told by my French TV friends that Isabelle came over the top of a raise and picked up a pot. Twenty-six players remain.

5:40pm–With tenty minutes until the dinner break, we are down to 27 players. Isabelle’s time with Bellande was short-lived thanks to a re-draw. I can report that Bellande didn’t stop talking the entire time. Among some of his lines…

“I haven’t looked at my hand yet, but people tell me that my blind is a very difficult one to steal.”

“I’m going to look at my cards and then I am going to advise you to pass” –said to Isabelle as she considered a button raise.

5:29pm–The room exploded with Jean-Robert Belande’s suckout. A player had made a great call against him, then Bellande sucked out a backdoor flush. The player left before he could even get paid. The reason I bring it up is because Isabelle has just been moved to Bellande’s right.

5:08pm–It’s a common problem around here. The bathrooms are a goodly distance away from the tournament area. Unless someone goes in the tank for five minutes, you’re going to miss a few hands if you need to make a trip to the john. And so it was that Isabelle found herself in need of a break. Phil Hellmuth was in an all-in hand with another player, and off sprinted Isabelle.

She only missed one hand.

5:00–Blinds moving up to 2500/5000/500

4:51pm–Some shifting around has moved a big-stack and…talkative Phil Hellmuth to Isabelle’s table. I don’t think I have to tell what I want to happen here. I don’t think I have to say how much I’d enjoy it if…well, you know.

4:17pm–Down to four tables.

3:53pm–Just back from a break, heading into the 2K/4K/500 round, Isabelle is sitting Top Ten in chips with a little more than 100K in her stack.

3:17pm–No messing around today for Isabelle. She has doubled up to nearly 100,000 in chips, this time getting KQ to outrun a naked ace. She’s two for two now. Forty-four players remain.

3:04pm–You can hear Mercier laughing fro across the room. Today, she is relaxed, allowing herself to belly-laugh at the table’s jokes and silliness. A quick slip inside the rail and she looks up, tears in her eyes from laughing so hard.

“You’re checking up on me?”

“Just your stack,” I say. “You’ve doubled up.”

“Won it, lost it back, won it again.” And then she is back to laughing, stretched out, and relaxed as the money gets bigger, and the bracelt grows closer. She still has some work to do to get deep-stacked, but she is bound and determined to get there.

2:15pm–With the day just underway, Mercier has doubled up with a naked ace against her opponent’s unimproved KJ. Mercier now has almost $50K in chips

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