There were more hangers on doors this morning. Walking to the press room “Do not disturb” signs seemed everywhere, protecting the occupants from a harsh and unnecessary wake up call, albeit at 11.30am. The fact was that these rooms belonged to those with no place urgently to go, and no need to wake before time. These were the rooms of the busted.

It’s how it goes in a festival like this, and indeed in a Main Event like this, which tonight is down to just 23 players. There will be more signs on doors tomorrow morning.

But if a sign on a door is indicative of defeat, the prospect of an early start never felt better for the others, not least for Marc Macdonnell, chip leader tonight with 3,600,000.

Chip leader tonight: Marc MacdonnellIrishman Macdonnell continues to have a great week and a great year, with more than $270,000 earned in 2015 alone. That figure will go up considerably before the end of the week. His lead is well deserved but thin, with former leader Gleb Tremzin in second place with 3,535,000. The Russian Tremzin being another player smashing his previous best performance, an 83rd place finish here last year.

Also still in contention is Gavin O’Rourke, whose fantastic day began in the early hours of this morning when the $100 Spin & Go he was playing became a jackpot Spin & Go. He didn’t hit the million, but he did pick up $100,000, which could be dwarfed by the prize money here if he continues to play in the same way as today.

Like I said, an early start never felt so good. So will say the likes of all of those returning tomorrow. Here is the full list of counts going into Day 5 of the Main Event.

Marc Macdonnell – 3,600,000
Gleb Tremzin – 3,535,000
Benjamin Lamprecht – 3,190,000
Javier Gomez – 2,282,000
Ennio Bozzano 1,963,000
Ilkin Amirov – 1,932,000
Slaven Popov – 1,760,000
Gavin O’Rourke – 1,746,000
Ivan Deyra – 1,164,000
Vlado Banicevic 1,032,000
Bruno Lopes – 984,000
Thomas Butzhammer – 977,000
Sebastian Gohr – 756,000
Hossein Ensan – 700,000
Onur Unsal – 654,000
Chris Walker – 608,000
Olivier Ferrero – 589,000
Abbas Moradi – 484,000
Henri Jaakkola – 411,000
Dominik Paus – 395,000
Preben Stokkan – 336,000
Samuel Vousden – 203,800
Tomas Pleticha – 171,000

While it was a good day for some, a tough one for others. Ori Miller could speak to the latter. As we wrote, his day was undone by the pocket queens of Lamprecht, which undid his own aces. Had the queen not appeared on the flop Miller would still be here with a sizeable lead. Instead the Israeli finished in a career best 26th, even if it might feel like a low point for the next few hours.

Ori MillerThe prospect of a back to back winner was alive and well coming into the day. Malta champion Niall Farrell was still going strong until his day was cut short by Foeke Deinum (who would go on to finish in 28th place). There followed departures also for Ivan Demidov, Kitty kuo, Andrew Chen, former chip leader Sam Chartier, and others, all of which you can see here.

That coverage continues at 12 noon tomorrow, both on the Blog and with EPT Live at full speed as we play down to a final table. In the meantime you can catch up on all the action from the day on our coverage page.

Alongside the Main event, the High Rollers returned today. Some 248 of them have stumped up the €10,000 to play Day 1 to make this another big one. You can follow all the action until they bag up later tonight on our High Roller page.

For now it’s time to book an early wake-up call and do all of this again tomorrow. Until then.

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Stephen Bartley is a staff writer for the PokerStars Blog.

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