LAPT Florianopolis: Final table or bust

Welcome back to Florianopolis, which these days has put behind it the rainy and bleak past it was known for two days ago and has instead embraced the optimism of bright sunshine; perfect stuff for that old cliché of things getting hot inside as well as outside.

But we don't do cliché here. We do stark realism. It's the type of things brought home to you at 2am as players play on into a 14th hour at the tables. So here are today's hard facts.

Just 36 players remain from a total field of 364. In two days we've lost 328 to chip erosion and those 12 have so far been paid for their graft.

Today we'll play down to eight. However long it takes and however hard tournament staff are begged to stop the clock. We need a final and by crikey by the close today that's what we'll have.

Chip leader Rudy Blondeau

Our leader coming back this afternoon is Rudy Blondeau of Canada, a name fresh on our memories as we only finished typing it a few hours ago. Blondeau has 536,500, a few thousand ahead of second placed Andre Sa from Brazil, who unpacks 511,000. But such fortunes can change easily in poker. So take heart PokerStars qualifier Richard Gui. The American returns as one of the short stacks with a little more than 60k.

That's more than enough to cause some damage. Just ask Team PokerStars Online Pro Jorge Arias. Yesterday he seemed destined to peak at a mere 15,000 chips until he was switched to the feature table. It was there he shone under the television lights, bagging up 130,000 by the close.

The PokerStars Blog team (out of shot) among those tackling the surf this morning

The players will be arriving soon with play due to start at noon.