Bob Geldolf may not like Mondays, but I’m quite a fan after the action from the Rio on this particular Monday. I have a man I know leading the race to be a WSOP champion, and Doyle Brunson is back deep in the poker action at the WSOP, in short it was a busy day.
Event #53
The $1,500 No Limit Hold’em Event #53 is the latest event in this year’s WSOP to run over it’s scheduled time, and go into a fourth day. With just 3 players left in, David Vamplew is clinging on to the chip lead, and hoping to take his first WSOP bracelet in his second WSOP final table of the year. Vamplew has both the experience and recent run good gap over the other two players, Arttu Raekorpi doesn’t even seem to have a page on the Hendon Mob, while Brett Shaffer hasn’t won a major live title in his career.
I’ve met and talked to David several times over the years, and I’m pretty sure he’s the favourite to take this title, and I know his game is more than solid. The chip counts going into the extra day are:
- David Vamplew – 5,345,000
- Brett Shaffer – 5,285,000
- Arttu Raekorpi – 2,055,000
The players will be back with the cards in the air at 1pm Las Vegas time, and will be playing to a winner.
Event #54
Day 2 of the $1,000 No Limit Hold’em Event #54 saw 297 stacks of chips compressed into just 15. With everyone playing Day 2 guaranteed a return, players were falling throughout the day. Some of those to bite the dust were Kathy Liebert (188th for $2,283), Erick Seidel (174th for $2,283), JC Tran (106th for $2,854) and Matt Salsberg (31st for $10,534). The 14 still in are pretty fresh faced, with no big names jumping out to grab the favourite tag. The chips stacks coming back for the final day are:
- Barry Hunter – 1,800,000
- Michael Zucchet – 1,020,000
- Joseph Wertz – 900,000
- Thomas Hall – 720,000
- Jacob Bazeley – 675,000
- Orjan Skommo – 615,000
- Jason Bigelow – 569,000
- Philippe Clerc – 475,000
- Matthias Bednarek – 450,000
- Dana Castaneda – 310,000
- Nicco Maag – 272,000
- Rocco Palumbo – 270,000
- Molissa Farber – 190,000
- Rupesh Pattni – 185,000
- Kenneth Gregersen – 180,000
The players will be back in the Amazon Room of the Rio in Las Vegas at 1pm to play down to a winner.
Event #55
Doyle Brunson is making waves in the $50,000 Players Championship by booking an additional 28 prop bets based on his action in the event. he has been taking to twitter to let people know how much of a sicko he really is:
Total 28 bets.Not as high as it seems. Total of 800k. Seems like a lot, but bets are to cash, final table, win.#lotsofactionforasickolikeme
— Doyle Brunson (@TexDolly) June 30, 2013
Doyle is currently sitting in 33rd place with 265,000 chips in his stack, and other recognisable names left in the field include Jennifer Harman (87,500), Brynn Kenney (187,600), Jason Mercier (215,800), John Juanda (246,200), Barry Greenstein (264,100), Erick Lindgren (276,000), Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier (325,000), Joe Hacham (326,000) and Justin Bonomo (343,000). As you can see, the field of 78 is more than a little stacked.
The top ten stacks for the start of Day 3 are:
- David Benyamine – 729,000
- Jonathan Duhamel – 401,300
- Matthew Ashton – 635,500
- Toy Burkholder – 623,000
- Jean Gaspard – 611,000
- Don Nguyen – 528,000
- Brian Rast – 489,500
- Justin Smith – 456,000
- Shaun Deeb – 453,600
- Adam Friedman – 436,600
The cards will be back in the air at 14:00pdt and the field will be contracting even further.
Event #56
The $2,500 No Limit Hold’em Event #56 attracted 1,736 players, but cut most of them down in their prime as only 261 made it into the second day. Recognisable names who are not coming back for Day 2 include Pius Heinz, Antonio Esfandiari, David Williams and Annette Obrestad. Some of the notable names who did manage to survive Day 1 are: Sam Holden (9,000), JC Tran (13,500), Jesse Sylvia (41,000) and Dan Smith (65,500).
The big stacks coming back for the second day are:
- Tony Ruberto – 178,200
- Florens Feenstra – 171,700
- Bob Panitch – 150,700
- Nicolas Levi – 148,300
- AJ Bertenshaw – 147,800
- Alvaro Borriz – 147,800
- Walter Treccarichi – 142,000
- Jamil Knaji – 129,900
- Chris Karambinis – 123,100
- Mark Teltscher – 113,100
The players will be back in the Amazon room at 1pm to play the second day of action.
Player of the Year
Only one change in the Player of the Year race today with the inclusion of Steve Sung in the top ten after his win in Event #52. The final week of the action in Las Vegas is going to get hard and fast as the players try to set themselves up to be the one leading the race after the WSOPE.
- Daniel Negreanu – 475.84
- David “Bakes” Baker – 475.35
- Tom Schneider – 438.51
- Marco Johnson – 430.63
- Chris Klodnicki – 400.80
- Anthony Gregg – 390.00
- Steve Sung – 369.50
- Jared Humby – 368.73
- Daniel Kelly – 344.70
- Jason Duval – 328.85
Hopefully this Tuesday will be just as full of action as Monday was, with the Events #53 and #54 both planned to finish and the continuing action in the other events (including the $50k Players Championship) it looks like I’m not going to be disappointed. The $5,000 NLHE Event #57 also starts on Tuesday, so I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a full day keeping up with all the action.