Next Up: The Semifinals

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The 11-star General has left the building.

The four quarterfinals matches were as exciting as anyone could have hoped. In the early draw, Sam Farha dispatched David Williams inside of fifteen minutes by rivering a bigger full house against Williams' flopped full house. Just two minutes later, Huck Seed and David Oppenheim flipped for their stacks, with Seed's pocket eights emerging victorious against Oppenheim's ace-queen.

Phil Hellmuth and Bertrand Grospellier one-upped the early draw when their match got underway just after 1pm. They got all their chips in on the fifth hand, with Hellmuth's pocket queens going down in flames to Grospellier's pocket aces. Vanessa Rousso and Daniel Negreanu provided a bit more play for the gallery and the NBC cameras. Negreanu took a 3-to-1 chip lead in the early stages of the match, but two ill-advised calls wound up costing him his whole stack and a place in the semifinals.

And so the semifinals are set. It's Team PokerStars on the black side of the bracket and Team "Old School" on the red side. Rousso and Grospellier will play for a spot in the finals against the winner of Farha v. Seed. Those matches were originally scheduled to begin at 4:45pm, but play has been so fast today that they will likely begin closer to 3:30pm.

See you then!