Managed to get this finished just 10 minutes before the start of the Main Event.
Event 64 - $888 Crazy Eights NLH, Day 3 of 4, 10185 entries Ten players remain in the Crazy Eights, a minimum of over $82K wrapped up but with eyes in the first prize of $888,888.
The chip leader is the Lithuanian Aleksandras Rusinovas who still has almost 100BB in his stack, almost double his nearest challenger Thomas Drivas of the US and then another gap to Vivian Saliba and Uselis Gediminas who are hair's breadth apart in third and fourth.
As I mentioned yesterday, no GB cashes but there is still Irish interest in this, with Patrick Clarke in 6th spot.
Mark Radoja is I think the only previous bracelet winner still left in, while Vlad Darie is aiming to make the FT of this massive field for the second time (6th place in 2017)
Event 66 - $1500 Limit Hold'em, Day 4 of 3, 541 entries David "ODB" Baker led at the end of Day 2, led at the end of Day 3 and never relinquished that lead throughout Day 4. He won a bracelet back in 2012 and now seven years later he's collected his second, and over $151K.
It was an all-American top three with Brian Kim and Dominzo Love filling the places.
Fourth place went to the best female player in this event, Japan's Ruiko Mamiya, Chris Ferguson went out in 5th and Greg Mueller in 9th.
Event 67 - S10K Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo 8 or better, Day 3 of 4, 151 entries No need for a Day 4, as Aussie Robert Campbell finished off the field within 3 days, collecting his second bracelet of the summer, the first being in Event 33, the $1500 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw. This one was worth $385K which if he takes it home it will convert to over half a million Australian Dollars.
If it was double glory for Campbell, it has been double agony for Yueqi Zhu as he was the heads-up loser for the second time in just a few days. Mike Wattel was third and Mike "The Mouth" Matusow fourth.
Event 69 - $1000 Mini Main Event, Day 2 of 2, 5521 players When one event finishes early, another compensates by finishing late. Eight players fought through the bag and tag at the end of the day that was supposed to crown a winner.
Two Americans are joined plyers from six different nationalities with the lead being held by Andres Korn (Argentina), ahead of Jeremy Sanderne (France) and Yi Ma (China). These are the only three players with over 30BB so there isn't going to be a lot of time for finesse play on the FT.
For the second time today, Ireland have a player at the FT (Philip Gildea) and the Day 1 chip leader Lula Taylor is still there doing it for the ladies.
The last British challenge fizzled out when William Young bust in 19th spot ($21K), with a deep run also for James Dempsey (29th, $17K)
Event 70 - $5K NLH 6-max, Day 2 of 4, 751 entries so far At last an event where it looks like the number of days allocated will be the number of days used.
28 players are left in, with the chip leader being Portuguese player Joao Vieira, the only player who will return to a stack of over 100BB. Israel (yes Israel again) have the second place in the shape of Shahar Levi and third is Olivier Busquet of France. Former ME winner Joe Cada has also built a healthy stack to lie in fourth place overnight.
Richard Sheils is the top Brit lying in the middle of the pack, and we were so close to having two brothers through to Day 3 as Brandon was the last elimination of the night in 29th spot ($21K). Two other GB players did make Day 3, though they both have short stacks - Chris Brammer and Jamie O'Connor with 17 & 16 BB respectively. On a weird table draw, they are part of a 6-strong grouping that includes all five of the shortest stacks plus Ryan Jones.
Event 71 - $500 Salute to Warriors NLH, Day 1 of 3, 1723 entries $40 of each buyin was held for the United Services Organisation and other military charities.
With the low buyin, a lot of the 287 remaining players are barely household names in their own households, but Ben Yu and Mike Sexton have both made it through with decent stacks.
France have the chip leader. Dominique Terzian who has two small WSOP cashes this year, but has been playing well in the Rio's Daily Deepstacks, cashing on the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 14th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 23rd, 24th, 27th, 28th and 29th June with the highlight being the event in the 9th where he won nearly $13K for winning a $400 tournament.
Garry Stevens-Smith is the highest place British player in second, looking for his first ever WSOP cash as they're just a few players away from the bubble. Other UK names through include Robert Ludwig, Andrew Fields and Jonathan Walker
In 40th place is Ryan Dodson, 41st is Robert Dodson. Listed as coming from adjacent states, I don't know if they are related.
Event 72 - $10K Limit Hold'em Championship, Day 1 of 3, 110 entries With late reg still open to the start of Day 2, the field size is just 4 down on last year's figure so matching that field size is still a possibility.
The lead is held by Andrew Brown ahead of Anthony Marsico and the evergreen Eli Elezra.
Three British players are among the 51 survivors, two of whom we are all pretty familiar - Benny Glaser and Stuart Rutter and Jason Gray. Gray may be the less familiar name of the three, he is now resident in Sydney, Australia but he did make the FT of a $10K WSOP event last year and has other FTs to his credit dating back to 1997.
To start today Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, 10 Day Event, 3 starting flights Wed/Thu/Fri Event 74 - $3200 WSOP.com Online NLH High Roller, 1 Day Event
Watch live coverage of the Main Event almost all night from 1:30am on BT Sport/ESPN (Sky Channel 423)
Event 64 - $888 Crazy Eights NLH, Day 3 of 4, 10185 entries If at first you don't succeed, try try again. That's the maxim used by Rick Alvarado who needed to re-enter six times (this was an unlimited re-entry until late reg closed event) before building a stack which he built throughout the four days which saw him take the bracelet and the $888,888 first prize.
It was a FT where comparitively few starting hands held up as flops, turns and rivers all led to weaker hands overtaking stronger starting ones, including the final hand where Alvarado's A4 found a four on the river to beat Mark Radoja's A10. Alvarado's mother had literally just arrived in the arena from California to see the final hand.
Third place went to Thomas Drivas, while the sponsors (the poker site that has all the 8's in the name) were no doubt rooting for fourth placed Vivian Saliba because she is one of their sponsored players and was sporting the relevant patches.
Vlad Darie did make the FT of this for the second time
Event 69 - $1000 Mini Main Event, Day 2 of 2, 5521 players With a large part of a raucous rail behind him, Jeremy Saderne who lives in London but hails from France (like previous bracelet winner Thomas Cazayous) took down the Mini Main (I wonder where I've seen that one before...) and earned himself over $628K.
There was so much love for the runner-up, Lula Taylor, that even Saderne's rail was chanting "Lula, Lula" over and over again after their man had beaten her heads-up. She had been the life and soul of the FT, laughing and joking here way through it and hugging other players after showdowns, win or lose.
The dénouement (he is French after all) came after Saderne picked up pocket aces to knock out Anders Kern in third place ($287K) and then five hands later, found the aces again to finish off Taylor ($388K)
Ireland's Philip Gadea ended up in 7th spot for $92K.
Event 70 - $5K NLH 6-max, Day 3 of 4, 751 entries so far On schedule with the FT settled and a very interesting line-up it is too.
Joao Vieira is the chip leader for the second day running, with a British player, Jamie O'Connor not too far behind. Olivier Busquet has several WSOP top five positions but no bracelets (but does have a 7-figure cash from an EPT High Roller back in 2014).
Fourth is former ME winner Joe Cada, fifth is Barry Hutter who won a bracelet back in 2015, and making up the numbers (for now at least) is Pierre Calamusa who is a French player who actually appears to be resident in France and has cashes on four continents.
Of the other two Brits who entered Day 3, Chris Brammer went out in 20th ($26K) while Richard Shields laddered one rung higher to the $32K level, fininshing 16th
Event 71 - $500 Salute to Warriors NLH, Day 1 of 3, 1723 entries Eight left, and fittingly for this event is a former aircraft maintenance engineer at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, Tyler Carroll.
Susan Faber and Dean Yoon complete an all-American top 3, in fact top 6 with the two other contenders being the short stacks of Jordan Knackstedt (Canada) and Jose Annaloro (Venezuela), but my favourite name among the FT is Uriah Grossglauser.
All 4 British players who entered Day 2 lasted long enough to cash but we lost them at pretty regular intervals during the day - Andrew Fields went out in 224th ($722), Robert Ludwig was 175th for $803, Jonathan Walker took home just over a grand in 93rd and the departure Garry Stevens-Smith in 50th for $2111 saw the end of the British challenge.
Event 72 - $10K Limit Hold'em Championship, Day 2 of 3, 118 entries Eight late entries made the field size just tip over last year's total and meant that the first prize would be $306K.
Fifteen players are still looking towards that $306K (and of course the bracelet) with envious eyes, with Mike Lancaster the only player with over a million chips in his bag.
Second place belongs to Juha Helppi who according to Wikipedia was part of the Finnish national paintball champions on four occasions, and third is Josh Arieh whose paintball expertise is unknown but has exhibited enough poker skills over the years to win 2 bracelets (but none for the last 14 years).
Eli Elezra is still in with a chance of winning his fifth bracelet (and second this series) but none of Messrs Glaser, Rutter or Gray made the cash for GB.
With late reg still open to the start of Day 2, the field size is just 4 down on last year's figure so matching that field size is still a possibility.
With the kafuffle over the opening of the new session of the European Parliament, we note that the first player out after the bubble burst was former MEP Tony G. He'll have more time on his hands to play poker now his party failed to get enough votes in the Lithuanian European Elections in May.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 1A of 10, The biggest tournament not in terms of numbers or buyin but definitely in prestige kicked off in traditional fashion with the previous years winner John Cynn getting the dealers to "Shuffle Up And Deal".
The Day 1A Chip leader is Bryan Campanello, with Timothy Su and Quentin Roussey in the second and third places.
I can't see a figure for Day 1A entries, but it must be way up on last year's 915 as we have more than that (960) through to Day 2.
Two former ME winners, Chris Moneymaker (2003) and Qui Nugyen (2016) both progressed, as did Billy Baxter, Alex Foxen, Jeffrey Lisandro, Erik Seidel and Brian Hastings.
From a British perspective, Craig McCorkell, Matthew Moss and Stephen Chidwick got plenty of coverage on the feature tables and are all in Day 2. Ben Philipps is the best placed of the GB contingent in 28th, with plenty of others through led by Jack Sinclair, Michael Kane, Martins Adeniya, Barny Boatman, Dennis Rubba, Andrew Hulme, Arron Woodcock all in the top 300, and among the middle stacks Simon Deadman, and with below starting stacks Tony Bloom, James Dempsey and Toby Lewis.
One British player who isn't through is Liv Boeree, she was knocked out of the Main Event by her boyfriend Igor Kurganov. Cue some awkward moments in that household I guess. Kurganov has at least put those chips to good use as he ended the day with over double the 60K starting stack.
TV coverage tonight is only from 2am to 4am, then they switch to covering the Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Event 74 - $3200 WSOP.com Online NLH High Roller, 1 Day Event Brandon Adams has been making WSOP cashes since 2005, is a lecture and graduate of Harvard and has had a number of six-figure cashes over the last couple of years so it was a little bit of a surpise to me that he hadn't previously won a bracelet.
He put that right by winning the penultimate online event of the 2019 WSOP.
Playing under the alias "DrOctagaon" he beat Nabil Cardoso heads-up and Vladimir Alexandrov in third, but the big hand of the FT was 5-handed when Adams' pocket aces eliminated Michael Vanier and virtually eliminated 2-time bracelet winner Calvin Anderson and from that point the result was rarely in doubt.
To start today None, but it is Day 1B of the main event.
The combination of a day off and some early finishes to tournaments has meant a bonus early update. The WSOP haven't yet published full chip counts from the Main so there will be an extra post about that later.
Event 70 - $5K NLH 6-max, Day 4 of 4, 751 entries so far It's the first bracelet for Joao Vieira (together with $785K) and a fourth ever Portuguese bracelet.
Holding the chip lead at the end of both Day 2 & Day 3, he lost the lead at points in the day but as the field of 6 got thinned out, he was back at the top and managed to convert that chip lead in to the win.
2009 ME winner (and 4-time bracelet holder) Joe Cada had a small lead as heads-up play commenced, but and up-and-down straight draw got there on the river for Vieira on the fourth hand saw lots of chips change hands and five hands later it was all over when Vieira picked up AK and Cada AQ and the board ran out Jack high.
Jamie O'Connor was the only British player left, managing third place and his best ever live cash (nearly $318K) but he was another victim of Vieria, who this time only needed to get as far as the turn card to come from behind.
Event 71 - $500 Salute to Warriors NLH, Day 2 of 3, 1723 entries No action on Thursday, it was a "rest day". They resume on Friday.
Event 72 - $10K Limit Hold'em Championship, Day 2 of 3, 118 entries "Suomi, Suomi" chanted the rail as Juha Helppi won an extended heads-up match with Mike Lancaster to take his first ever bracelet (and the small matter of $306K).
Over four hours earlier, Tommy Hang was busted when both him and Helppi made a flush, Hang's the 10-high flush but unfortunately for him, Helppi had the nut flush.
Josh Arieh finished 6th, John Racener 11th and Eli Elezra 12th. Elezra has been showing all month with a USA flag against his name to reflect his residence I guess but now has the Israeli flag to properly represent his nationality.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 1B of 10, 3250 entries so far 1915 entries on Day 1B so that makes the total with 1C and late reg (to the start of Day 2 for the first time) still to come.
A full report to come but early indications are that we have a British leader - Adam Owen.
Five former winners played 1B and all made it through - Chris Ferguson, Joe Hachem, Greg Merson, Greg Raymer and Ryan Riess. Hachem's son Daniel also progressed, with more than double the chips of his more famous father.
Looks like the TV coverage tonight is from 1:00am to 5:30, no Hot Dog Eating Contest to get in the way tonight though I see this is getting a repeat during the day but the poker isn't. Priorities BT Sport/ESPN, priorities!
To start today None, but it is Day 1C of the main event and the Salute to Warriors resumes.
I've now had time to look over the full list of those who've made it through from Day 1B
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 1B of 10, 3250 entries so far I mentioned before that Adam Owen was the Day 1B chip leader, in fact it's a British 1-2 as Gary Blackwood has bagged the second biggest stack.
Several other GB players with very healthy stacks - Carsten Hansen lies 11th, Thomas Drinkwater is 16th, Yudhishter Jaswal lies 34th and Jan Eric Schiwppert is 39th.
Furthern down, some GB names I've picked out include David Maudlin, Ben Dobson, Joel Isla, Harry Lodge, Alex Goulder, Nicholas Marchington, Conor Beresford, Leo Worthington-Leese, Sam Razavi, Roberto Romanello, Fraser McIntyre and John Duthie and there's plenty of others among the 1416 qualifiers.
From outside the UK, the winner of Event 44, Ash Moshe sits in third spot with Allen Kessler just two spots further back. Barry Hutter, fresh from his FT earlier on today bags more than three times his starting stack while final tablemate Olivier Busquet is also just over that mark.
Former Main Event FT'er John Hesp won't be repeating that feat, as the colourfully attired player from Bridlington was eliminated, as were recent bracelet winner Anthony Zinno, both the Ott twins, Mike Sexton, Pierre Neuville, Ben Dobson and Sam Grafton.
Event 71 - $500 Salute to Warriors NLH, Day 3 of 3, 1723 entries The WSOP didn't quite get the fairy story they wanted from this event; that a US Military Veteran would win it, but I suppose they got the next best story, the first female win in an Open Event this year.
71-year old Susan Faber has really only been playing the game for about 10 years, and regularly plays events when the WSOP circuit visits her nearest events in North Carolina and had one earlier WSOP proper cash (earlier this summer). The $121K is by far the biggest cash of her career.
She only took five hands heads-up to finish off Rob Stark, with Dean Yoon having departed in third. Faber eliminated her final four tablemates, including Day 2 chip leader (and the last Vet standing), Taylor Carroll who ended up in 5th spot
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 1C of 10, 8127 entries so far Nearly 5000 players decided to play Day 1C, taking the total figure so far to over 8000, the second highest figure and with late reg open until the start of play today for Day 2AB and tomorrow for 2C, there's a slight chance that the all-time record of 8773 which dates back to 2006 could be broken.
So what happened on Day 1C? Not one but two players were disqualified (one for stealing someone else's chips, one for dropping his trousers and throwing a shoe at the table hitting one of the other players). Play was suspended for a while due to the effects of the earthquake in California, and Phil Ivey was bust within the first half of Level 1. Just your regular day in the Main Event.
3647 players made it through the five levels of play with James Henson from Tiki Island which sounds like something from Disneyland but is actually a village off the coast of Texas. The big names start at Position 2 with Mike "Timex" McDonald, and in third place is Joshua Ray.
The highest placed GB player is Barry Donovan who sits with 280K chips (starting stack was 60K) in 6th spot. Andrew Pantling, Jack Salter, Kenneth Broad, Carl Shaw, Andrew Fields, Juan Sanchez, Charles Combes, Sean Mills, Chris Brammer, Raul Manzanares, Gilad Gutkin, Thomas Ward and Stuart McNally all line inside the top 300.
Lower down a quick search through those with "GB" against their names adds the likes of Peter Linton, Jason Gray, Philip Long, Alexander Zeligman, Guy Taylor (I mentioned a week or two ago about his record in massive field tourneys), Sam Trickett (playing his first event of the year), Max Silver, Ben Heath, Jake Cody, Sunny Chattha and Louis Salter. Niall Farrell and Stuart Rutter both have barely over half their starting stack, with Talal Shakerchi and Michael Kane just under that mark.
Some former winners battled through - reigning title holder John Cynn, Joe McKeehan (who was at the table when the first disqualification happened), Scotty Nguyen, Jim Bechtel, Johnny Chan and 2002 winner Robert Varkonyi. We did lose our first former winners though - Jamie Gold, Joe Cada and Martin Jacobson
A decent amount of coverage on TV tonight, and starting at not too bad of a time - midnight to 4:30 if I'm reading the programme guide correctly.
We still haven't seen the entrance of the Poker Brat Phil Hellmuth yet, he's been off on vacation to Macchu Pichu and the Galapagos Islands, along with actor Rob Lowe and owner of the Golden State Warriors and LA Dodgers Peter Guber. He hasn't indicated yet whether he'll be back in time from South America to play the Main.
To start today Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, 4 Day Event, 3 starting flights Sat/Sun/Mon
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 2AB of 10, 8225 entries so far A man named Su!
Not as many distractions as the previous day, so the poker could take centre stage. The day ended after the regulation 5 2-hour levels with Boston, Massachusetts native Timothy Su bagging the biggest stack ahead of Tony Blanchandin of France and Germany's Anton Morgenstern in third. Morgenstern has 4 6-figure cashes in his career, including a run to 22nd in the 2015 ME but has yet to win big NLH live event.
That doesn't apply to Qui Nguyen of course. He won the 2016 Main and after delivering today's "shuffle up and deal" he proceeded to win pot after pot and ends Day 2 with a very tidy 602K in chips.
Florian Duta is the first player listed with "GB" against his name, but in reality he's a Romanian who lives in Birmingham so the honour of top Brit (out of about 50 who've qualified) goes to Gary Blackwood who has two previous WSOP Cashes, neither for more than $2000.
Other GB names inside the top 400 are Marc Foggin, Day 1 chip leader Adam Owen, Barny Boatman, Fraser MacIntyre, Nicholas Marchington, Joshua Boulton, Yudhishter Jaswal, Michael Kane, Craig McCorkell, Timothy Flanders, Jack Maskill, Leo Worthington-Leese, Andrew Martin, Arron Woodcock, Cyril Andre, Armin Ghojevand, Thomas Drinkwater, Mitchell Johnson, Philip Clarke, Robert Heidorn, Alex Goulder, Ben Dobson, Charlotte Godwin and Conor Beresford
While Nguyen moved on, four former winners didn't. Chris Ferguson, Greg Raymer, Greg Merson and Ryan Reiss all will have to wait until next year to try and get a second win.
Picking a few more players who are still in leads me to Shaun Deeb, Allen Kessler, Jeffrey Lisandro, Asi Moshe, Neil Blumenfield, Todd Brunson and Brian Hastings. Doubtless there are plenty more well known names lurking as well.
About a hundred players took advantage of the late reg being extended to the start of today, the WSOP are expecting slightly more than that for the start of Day 2C, and then we'll know the exact size of the field, the prizepool, and the massive first prize.
Phil Hellmuth has tweeted a video of a Giant Galapagos Tortoise with the logic that a tortoise (implying not the hare) always wins in NLH and that he is back and ready to enter Day 2C.
The TV coverage starts right from the start of play tonight - 7:30 UK time to 11:00pm, of course that's with cards on a 30-minute delay, cards are actually in the air at 11am Vegas time, 7pm BST.
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, 4 Day Event, Day 1A, 702 entries so far With considerably lower media spotlight, the first post-Main Event tournament started with the first of three starting flights attracting just over 700 players, of whom 240 made Day 2.
France have been coming on strong during the second half of the WSOP, including here where Leandry Ainonkpo has a massive lead, his 726K well ahead of Mark Eddleman's 464K and Schahin Ghiai with 409K in third.
John Hesp will be disappointed that he busted out of the Main Event (as will ESPN) but he's having a go here and lies 47th and top Brit. Shola Akindele, Daniel Myers, Irene Albarran, Gareth James, Barry Grime, Damien Le Goff, Graeme Ladd, Simon Higgins and Niall Murray all made Day 2 and now have a couple of days off.
I can't see many names that I recognise, Valentin Vornicu, David "ODB" Baker and Victor Ramdin are about it.
To start today Event 76 - $800 WSOP.com Online NLH 6-max, 1 Day Event
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 2C of 10, 8569 entries A milliard reasons to dream
344 players bought in just in time to start Day 2C, making the final number of players 8569, the second most in Main Event history, and bringing the first prize to a round $10 Million. The min-cash remains at $15000 for the players who finish 1063-1268 inclusive as to raise this by so much as a single dollar would have tax implications.
Does anyone remember when there was a difference between different versions of a billion? In some countries a billion was a million million, in others it was a thousand million (and that latter usage has now become standard). Well in some countries where the former usage was common, the word for a thousand million was a "milliard". We've got about half a milliard chips in play but a Milliard in the chip lead at the end of Day 2C - Julien Milliard from Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. He has almost a million chips, ahead of Czech player Vlastimil Pustina and another American Andrew Brokos.
We have to look all the way down to 44th to find the best British player, Mark Teltscher who has about half Milliard's chips. The next group of Brits includes Barry Donovan, Philip Long, Daniel Charlton, Andrew Pantling, Luke Brereton, Kenneth Broad, Sean Mills, Jack Salter, Chris Determeyer, Christopher Sly, Jonathan McCann, Alexander Zeligman, Laurids Nielsen, Richard Kellett, Christopher Gatley, Louis Salter, Thomas MacDonald, Samuel Goodman, Oliver Price, Carl Shaw and Thomas Seaman all of whom like in the top 500 with a few names from further back in Jake Cody, Usman Siddique, Tom Hall, Jason Gray, Peter Linton, Paul Ephremesen and Max Silver.
Phil Hellmuth late registered, turned up about 45 minutes late and then proceeded to bluff of three-quarters of his chips pretty quickly and didn't stop mumbling to himself and anyone else who'd listen until he finally got eliminated.
He wasn't alone in former winners getting busted. Robert Varkonyi, Jerry Yang and Scott Blumstein also found themselves on the rail, leaving by my reckoning eight ME winners still in (Chan, Bechtel, Nguyen, Moneymaker, Hackem, McKeehen, Nguyen and Cynn). The first Nguyen is of Scotty Nguyen who delivered the "shuffle up and deal baby!" at the start of play.
Among those who did make it through, former final tabler Tom Cannuli lies inside the top 10, Kathy Liebert is 20th just ahead of Adam Friedman and Jeff Madsen is 41st. Also with decent stacks are Calvin Anderson, Bertrand Grospelier, David "ODB" Baker and another who has been all the way to the FT, Cliff Josephy.
After the 2 Day 2s, 2880 players are still involved and will all combine now for Day 3 where the TV coverage isn't at as kind of time for UK viewers, action on BT Sport/ESPN from 3am-7am.
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, 4 Day Event, Day 1B, 702 entries so far The chip lead changed in the last level of Day 1B, Stefan Ivanov winning a huge hand to vault himself into the number one position. The Bulgarian has the lead from Hophuong Loy and Joris Ruijs.
With a lot of players still involved in ME action, there was still a number of better-known casualties from the Big One who decided to play the Little One, Vlaidimir Geshkenbein, Daniel Ott, Mike Sexton, both Barry and Allyn Shulman, Michael Mizrachi and Chris Ferguson.
505 players made it through of whom Tamer Kamel appears to be Top Brit, with William Overmire, Brian Leddy, Mohammed Suhail and Waikiat Lee the next best placed.
Event 76 - $800 WSOP.com Online NLH 6-max, 1 Day Event, 1560 entries This one has gone to Shawn Buchanan ahead of David "Bakes" Baker and Hunter Gebron. The Canadian is a very familiar pro player, having over $6m in live earnings, but this is his first bracelet.
This was the final online event of the 2019 WSOP.
To start today Event 77 - $3K Limit Hold'em 6-max, 4 Day Event 08/07/19 Event 90 - $50K High Roller NLH, 3 Day Event. This event was a late addition to the schedule, hence why it is out of sequence in terms of event numbers.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 3 of 10, 8569 entries From a chip and a chair to chip leader inside a day
Preben Stokkan had a pretty good start to Day 3, doubling his stack from 93K to 180K or so inside the first level. Then he tried a bluff with all but 5K of his stack, was over-shoved and had to fold, thanking his lucky stars he hadn't shoved that last 5K chip in too, and was left with the proverbial "chip and a chair" at the first break of the day. It wasn't the lowest denomination chip, but it was just a single chip.
From then on, he didn't look back, and a huge hand just before the end of the night brought him to a total of 2.184 million, the biggest stack in the room and the only player over 2 million in chips.
Hand for hand play wasn't needed; while they were getting all the hands paused to start hand-for-hand, on one of the last tables to get ready, Ryan Pochedly (who had been on the feature table a couple of days ago) lost all his chips when Julien Pineda rivered trip sevens. As has become traditiona, Pochedly was given a free entry to next year's ME as a consolation, but Jack Effel was able to say "with 1286 players left in the 50th World Series Of Poker Main Event, you are all IN THE MONEY" leading to no doubt the cheering and mutual back-slapping that has become the norm when the bubble bursts in the Main Event. Play was then immediately called off for the night with just over 6 minutes in the level.
Behind Stokkan, Andrew Brokos and Ryan Dodge lie second and third with Galen Hall the first former bracelet winner in 4th.
We lost former winners Scotty Nguyen, Joe Hachem and John Cynn during the day (though Hachem's son is still in), and Jim Bechtel too although I believe the player in question was Jim Bechtel jr not the former ME winner. That leaves just two trying to win their second Main, Chris Moneymaker and Qui Nguyen, plus Johnny Chan still alive with the possibility of his third.
There are a number of GB players with serious stacks - Daniel Charlton and Alexander Zeligman lie virtually neck-and-neck with 1.4m chips, Robert Heidorn has 1.2m and Oliver Bithell just over a million. I'm going to list all the players marked as GB from here on, for today I haven't the time to sift out any psuedo-Brits but I'll try and get that on from tomorrow.
So, in chip order:
Max Silver Marc Foggin Christopher Sly Thomas Drinkwater Yudhishter Jaswal Stuart McNally Luke Brereton Nicholas Marchington Nikolay Ponomarev Jack Maskill Andrew Martin Timothy Flanders Philip Long Carl Shaw Laurids Neilsen Pierre Joubert Craig McCorkell Steven Morris Adam Owen Jonathan McCann Sean Mills Simon Deadman Jan Eric Schwippert Alexander Clark Gary Blackwood Thomas Seaman Louis Salter Mitchell Johnson Robert Warburton Thomas MacDonald Scott Franklin Oliver Price Christian Christner Philip Clarke Thomas Waters Michael Kane Peter Linton Armand Matti Samuel Goodman Mark Teltscher Barny Boatman Robert McAdam Chris Determeyer Florian Duta Conor Beresford Joshua Boulton Alex Goulder Charles COmbes Daiva Byrne Barauskaite Guillermo Sanchez Paul Ephremesen Gilad Gutkin Stephen Hay Leo Worthington-Leese Mauro Suriano Raul Martinez Adam Daniel Cyril Andre William White Ben Dobson Igor Dursel
Phew. All of the above have now guaranteed a min-cash of $15K.
A few other names still in - Jean-Robert Ballande, Joseph Cheong, Eoghan O'Dea, Ertic Baldwin, Tom Cannuli, Jay Farber and Gus Hansen.
TV coverage is scheduled to run from 12 midnight to 4am, note yesterday's show as delayed because ESPN in the US were carrying the overrunning MLB All-Star Home Run Derby, so their coverage started about an hour later (and also ran until an hour later than the scheduled finish time).
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, 4 Day Event, Day 1C, 5463 entries A huge Day 1C took the starting field for the Little One for One Drop over the 5000 mark, with the chip lead for the day (but still well behind the Day 1A leader) in the hands of Nikolay Fay from Russia, with Darren Attebery and Kenneth Golden second and third.
The Moldovan resident in Northern Ireland, Dragos Trofimov, is the first player with "GB" against his name, but if you want a full Brit you've got to look down to 33rd where Sunny Chattha is listed. Several other British players survive, including Tsz Ho inside the top 100, George Demetriou and Calin Trif inside the top 200 and John Wright, Usman Siddique, Iaron Lightbourne, Sam Razavi and Will Kassouf and Ian Simpson among approximately 50 players from over here making it through Day 1C in total.
Two former ME winners are there - Jamie Gold and Greg Raymer, as are Shaun Deeb, seniors bracelet winner Howard Mash and Pierre Bounahara (son of former November Niner Bob Bounahara)
From the three starting flights, a little over 2000 players will return for the combined Day 2.
Event 77 - $3K Limit Hold'em 6-max, Day 1 of 4, x entries More Limit Hold'em. Just what we need. Maybe not, with only 193 entries and only 57 making it through to Day 2.
Ron Carmona finished 17th in the $1500 version a few days ago, and he's in a position to do better here by being the Day 1 chip leader with Joshua Turner and Zachary Gruneberg second and third.
I know I often make the point that GB players historically do comparitively badly at Limit Hold'em but perhaps things are changing here as we have two inside the Top 8 overnight - Stuart Rutter is 4th and Patrick Leonard is 8th.
Dual bracelet winner Robert Campbell is one of the others through as are Dan Zack, Jeff Shulman, Greg Mueller, Chris Vitch and Joao Vieira.
29 will get paid (a min cash is $4571 and the first prize is $133K).
08/07/19 Event 90 - $50K Final Fifty High Roller NLH, Day 1 of 3, 109 entries so far. This event was a late addition to the schedule, hence why it is out of sequence in terms of event numbers.
A late and in some places controversial addition to the structure, 70 players have made 109 entries so far, just one below the similar event at the start of the series with late reg and re-entry open until the start of Day 2 that number should be surpassed.
Seth Davies has the early lead ahead of Dan Smith and first British name Elior Sion. The British challenge is very strong here, as Daniel Tang, Ben Heath, Ben Rolle, Chi Zhang, Talal Shakerchi, Canay Ekmen and Orpen Kisacikoglu make it 8 players listed as GB from the 44 qualifiers.
Of course at this buyin level plenty of the big hitters are present, Brian Rast, Ben Yu, Fedor Holz, Dan Shak and Daniel Negreanu amongst them.
To start today Event 78 - $1500 PLO Bounty, 3 Day Event Event 79 - $3K NLH, 4 Day Event
Early Day 4 Main Event Update Eliminations have come thick and fast post-bubble; an hour and a half in and we've already reached the first ladder point.
British eliminations
$15970 Payout level 1023 Jack Maskill 1042 Cyril Andre
$15000 Min Cash 1148 Mauro Suriano 1164 Jan Eric Schwippert 1181 Daiva Byrne Barauskaite (had aces cracked by kings) 1182 Ben Dobson 1188 Leo Worthington-Leese 1209 William White 1213 Louis Salter 1264 Igor Dursel
Some other eliminations - Jeffrey Lisandro, Molly Mossey, Mike "Timex" McDonald, Martin Arce (no idea who he is but couldn't resist mentioning him), successive eliminations of Chinese players Yu Shen and Ye Shen in 1152th and 1153rd, the doubtless immaculately dressed Max Steinberg and double bracelet winner (dating back to 1995 & 2001) Steve Zolotow.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 4 of 10, 8569 entries Online qualifier tops the chip listings
The Day 4 chip lead is held by Canadian Dean Morrone, who bagged almost 5 million chips at the end of the night. This means he still has over 200 big blinds, and with the currnet payout level at $34K he has already more than tripled his lifetime live earnings according to the Hendon Mob database.
Denmark have the runner-up at this point in Lars Bonding, with Michael Messick in third.
All three former winners who entered Day 3 had to leave the playing area and head to the payout cage, Chris Moneymaker and Scotty Nguyen were followed out of the event by the last remaining previous Champion, Qui Nguyen.
354 players did make Day 5, including Antonio Esfandiari, Todd Brunson, 2013 runner-up Jay Farber, Mike The Mouth Matusow, Daniel Hachem (son of...) and three-time Superbowl winner Richard Seymour. Allen Kessler is also through, albeit with a short stack, the first time he has cashed in 16 WSOP Main Events (although he has cashed in a WSOP-E ME).
There looks like there is a two-pronged British challenge in the top 10, but Robert Heidorn is a German resident in the UK so the honours for top Brit goes to Sean Mills who has also already exceeded his career live earnings.
Oliver Bithell lies 22nd, Alex Zeligman is 29th, Nicholas Marchington is 32nd, Chris Sly is 50th and Craig McCorkell 53rd, all with 2.5m chips or more. Lower down, we can also wish good luck to Daniel Charlton, Carl Shaw, Andrew Martin, Yudhishter Jaswal, Jonathan McCann, Mitchell Johnson, Thomas Waters, Luke Brereton, Max Silver, Thomas Seaman, Marc Foggin and Peter Linton as they all endeavour to make the FT and ultimately win the $10million first prize.
Just time for a snapshot of a few GB players we lost along the way Michael Kane, Paul Ephremesen, Alex Goulder, Robert McAdam and Mark Teltscher all departed with slips for $34845. At the $30780 level, we lost Timothy Flanders, Thomas Drinkwater, Simon Deadman and Barny Boatman, and for $27390 Gilad Gutkin, Stuart McNally and Oliver Price were casualties.
Poker on TV tonight from 1:00am to 4:00am and from 4:30am to 6:00 so plenty of Day 5 coverage.
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, 4 Day Event, Day 2, 6248 entries The field was narrowed down to 412 players at the end of Day 2, with 4-time bracelet winner and last year's Player of the Year Shaun Deeb bagging the biggest stack at the halfway point.
Deeb is followed in second by Matt Souza and in third by Jeremy Dresch with the British challenge starting at 6th where we can find the name of Ian Simpson.
The next three "GB" names listed aren't actually British, so we look to 66th and find the name of William Overmire, who appears to be British resident in Australia (in fact he hasn't a single cash recorded in a UK based event). Rhys Jones, Usman Siddique and Sam Razavi are among the other British names still in.
Phil Hellmuth registered at the last minute, but didn't hang around for very long, but some of those who did make it through are David "ODB" Baker, Andy Bloch, Erick Lindgren, Mike Sexton and Loni Harwood.
Event 77 - $3K Limit Hold'em 6-max, Day 2 of 4, 193 entries Only 6 left, so safe to assume this will be over within 3 days.
There's a Canadian in the lead in the Main, and one here too with Tu Dao leading from Alain Alinat, who appears to be a Frenchman resident in Thailand. In sixth place there is a rare appearance for a player from New Zealand on a final table - Jan Suchanek who will move in to second place in the all-time NZ money list whichever of the top 6 places he ends up in.
Both Stuart Rutter and Patrick Leonard registered a rare GB cash in Limit Hold'em, Rutter taking $5484 for 22nd and Leonard $6748 for 15th.
08/07/19 Event 90 - $50K Final Fifty High Roller NLH, Day 2 of 3, 123 entries. 71 unique players made up the 123 entries so there were plenty of re-entries involved here.
Brandon Adams won his first bracelet less than a week ago in Event 74, and he is in pole position for a second here, bagging up a stack that amounts to 75BB when he returns for the final table. Second is Adrian Mateos from Spain and Michael Addamo from Australia lies third. For the record the other players remaining are Danny Tang (from Hong Kong), Sam Soverel, Ali Imsirovic and Keith Tilston.
When there were 13 players left the chances of a GB winner were fairly decent, but one after another Talal Shakercki, Canay Ekmen, Ben Heath and Elior Sion all said their goodbyes and the event was bereft of Brits.
Event 78 - $1500 PLO Bounty, Day 1 of 3, 1140 entries 1140 have become 247 after day 1 of Event 78, with a British player well in contention - Richard Kellett from Chorley is in 2nd place overnight, trailing just Austria's Tobias Schwecht by a few thousand chips. Players from China and Japan fill the next two places before the first American, Jason Young from Suffern, New York.
A few notables remain - Jesse Sylvia, Bryce Yockey, Connor Drinan, Jeff Lisandro, JC Tran, Daniel Negreanu and Max Pescatori among them, while Kellett is joined by, among others, Timothy Chung, Paul Rigg, Joshua Green, Jerome Bradpiece and Toby Lewis flying the Union Flag.
Event 79 - $3K NLH, Day 1 of 4, 671 entries 148 qualifiers for Day 2 and we have a Magyar 1-2 as Vlad Darie and Andras Nemeth make it two Hungarians in the top two slots with Israel third in the shape of David Margi.
With all the focus on the main, and the 50K High Roller, this has gone under the radar in terms of NLH, but we have 8 British names to keep an eye on - Niall Murray, Patrick Leonard (fresh from his bustout in the Limit event), Chi Zhang, Damien Le Goff, Graeme Ladd, Tamer Kamel, Igor Dursel and Ben Dobson.
101 will make the money, with three-time bracelet winners Justin Bonomo and David Pham, two-time bracelet winners Kristen Bicknell and Athanasios Polychronopoulos plus Christoph Vogelsang, Rainer Kempe and Dan Zack (who is also still in Event 78) still looking to make that first checkpoint and then move on towards the FT.
To start today Event 80 - $1500 Mixed NLH/PLO, 3 Day Event Event 81 - $1500 Bracelet Winners Only NLH, 4 Day Event
Comments
Stunning work Barny, you are on the home straight now.
Hope you enjoyed the Tennis.
Event 64 - $888 Crazy Eights NLH, Day 3 of 4, 10185 entries
Ten players remain in the Crazy Eights, a minimum of over $82K wrapped up but with eyes in the first prize of $888,888.
The chip leader is the Lithuanian Aleksandras Rusinovas who still has almost 100BB in his stack, almost double his nearest challenger Thomas Drivas of the US and then another gap to Vivian Saliba and Uselis Gediminas who are hair's breadth apart in third and fourth.
As I mentioned yesterday, no GB cashes but there is still Irish interest in this, with Patrick Clarke in 6th spot.
Mark Radoja is I think the only previous bracelet winner still left in, while Vlad Darie is aiming to make the FT of this massive field for the second time (6th place in 2017)
Event 66 - $1500 Limit Hold'em, Day 4 of 3, 541 entries
David "ODB" Baker led at the end of Day 2, led at the end of Day 3 and never relinquished that lead throughout Day 4. He won a bracelet back in 2012 and now seven years later he's collected his second, and over $151K.
It was an all-American top three with Brian Kim and Dominzo Love filling the places.
Fourth place went to the best female player in this event, Japan's Ruiko Mamiya, Chris Ferguson went out in 5th and Greg Mueller in 9th.
Event 67 - S10K Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo 8 or better, Day 3 of 4, 151 entries
No need for a Day 4, as Aussie Robert Campbell finished off the field within 3 days, collecting his second bracelet of the summer, the first being in Event 33, the $1500 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw. This one was worth $385K which if he takes it home it will convert to over half a million Australian Dollars.
If it was double glory for Campbell, it has been double agony for Yueqi Zhu as he was the heads-up loser for the second time in just a few days. Mike Wattel was third and Mike "The Mouth" Matusow fourth.
Event 69 - $1000 Mini Main Event, Day 2 of 2, 5521 players
When one event finishes early, another compensates by finishing late. Eight players fought through the bag and tag at the end of the day that was supposed to crown a winner.
Two Americans are joined plyers from six different nationalities with the lead being held by Andres Korn (Argentina), ahead of Jeremy Sanderne (France) and Yi Ma (China). These are the only three players with over 30BB so there isn't going to be a lot of time for finesse play on the FT.
For the second time today, Ireland have a player at the FT (Philip Gildea) and the Day 1 chip leader Lula Taylor is still there doing it for the ladies.
The last British challenge fizzled out when William Young bust in 19th spot ($21K), with a deep run also for James Dempsey (29th, $17K)
Event 70 - $5K NLH 6-max, Day 2 of 4, 751 entries so far
At last an event where it looks like the number of days allocated will be the number of days used.
28 players are left in, with the chip leader being Portuguese player Joao Vieira, the only player who will return to a stack of over 100BB. Israel (yes Israel again) have the second place in the shape of Shahar Levi and third is Olivier Busquet of France. Former ME winner Joe Cada has also built a healthy stack to lie in fourth place overnight.
Richard Sheils is the top Brit lying in the middle of the pack, and we were so close to having two brothers through to Day 3 as Brandon was the last elimination of the night in 29th spot ($21K). Two other GB players did make Day 3, though they both have short stacks - Chris Brammer and Jamie O'Connor with 17 & 16 BB respectively. On a weird table draw, they are part of a 6-strong grouping that includes all five of the shortest stacks plus Ryan Jones.
Event 71 - $500 Salute to Warriors NLH, Day 1 of 3, 1723 entries
$40 of each buyin was held for the United Services Organisation and other military charities.
With the low buyin, a lot of the 287 remaining players are barely household names in their own households, but Ben Yu and Mike Sexton have both made it through with decent stacks.
France have the chip leader. Dominique Terzian who has two small WSOP cashes this year, but has been playing well in the Rio's Daily Deepstacks, cashing on the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 14th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 23rd, 24th, 27th, 28th and 29th June with the highlight being the event in the 9th where he won nearly $13K for winning a $400 tournament.
Garry Stevens-Smith is the highest place British player in second, looking for his first ever WSOP cash as they're just a few players away from the bubble. Other UK names through include Robert Ludwig, Andrew Fields and Jonathan Walker
In 40th place is Ryan Dodson, 41st is Robert Dodson. Listed as coming from adjacent states, I don't know if they are related.
Event 72 - $10K Limit Hold'em Championship, Day 1 of 3, 110 entries
With late reg still open to the start of Day 2, the field size is just 4 down on last year's figure so matching that field size is still a possibility.
The lead is held by Andrew Brown ahead of Anthony Marsico and the evergreen Eli Elezra.
Three British players are among the 51 survivors, two of whom we are all pretty familiar - Benny Glaser and Stuart Rutter and Jason Gray. Gray may be the less familiar name of the three, he is now resident in Sydney, Australia but he did make the FT of a $10K WSOP event last year and has other FTs to his credit dating back to 1997.
To start today
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, 10 Day Event, 3 starting flights Wed/Thu/Fri
Event 74 - $3200 WSOP.com Online NLH High Roller, 1 Day Event
Watch live coverage of the Main Event almost all night from 1:30am on BT Sport/ESPN (Sky Channel 423)
Well done. and thanks
If at first you don't succeed, try try again. That's the maxim used by Rick Alvarado who needed to re-enter six times (this was an unlimited re-entry until late reg closed event) before building a stack which he built throughout the four days which saw him take the bracelet and the $888,888 first prize.
It was a FT where comparitively few starting hands held up as flops, turns and rivers all led to weaker hands overtaking stronger starting ones, including the final hand where Alvarado's A4 found a four on the river to beat Mark Radoja's A10. Alvarado's mother had literally just arrived in the arena from California to see the final hand.
Third place went to Thomas Drivas, while the sponsors (the poker site that has all the 8's in the name) were no doubt rooting for fourth placed Vivian Saliba because she is one of their sponsored players and was sporting the relevant patches.
Vlad Darie did make the FT of this for the second time
Event 69 - $1000 Mini Main Event, Day 2 of 2, 5521 players
With a large part of a raucous rail behind him, Jeremy Saderne who lives in London but hails from France (like previous bracelet winner Thomas Cazayous) took down the Mini Main (I wonder where I've seen that one before...) and earned himself over $628K.
There was so much love for the runner-up, Lula Taylor, that even Saderne's rail was chanting "Lula, Lula" over and over again after their man had beaten her heads-up. She had been the life and soul of the FT, laughing and joking here way through it and hugging other players after showdowns, win or lose.
The dénouement (he is French after all) came after Saderne picked up pocket aces to knock out Anders Kern in third place ($287K) and then five hands later, found the aces again to finish off Taylor ($388K)
Ireland's Philip Gadea ended up in 7th spot for $92K.
Event 70 - $5K NLH 6-max, Day 3 of 4, 751 entries so far
On schedule with the FT settled and a very interesting line-up it is too.
Joao Vieira is the chip leader for the second day running, with a British player, Jamie O'Connor not too far behind. Olivier Busquet has several WSOP top five positions but no bracelets (but does have a 7-figure cash from an EPT High Roller back in 2014).
Fourth is former ME winner Joe Cada, fifth is Barry Hutter who won a bracelet back in 2015, and making up the numbers (for now at least) is Pierre Calamusa who is a French player who actually appears to be resident in France and has cashes on four continents.
Of the other two Brits who entered Day 3, Chris Brammer went out in 20th ($26K) while Richard Shields laddered one rung higher to the $32K level, fininshing 16th
Event 71 - $500 Salute to Warriors NLH, Day 1 of 3, 1723 entries
Eight left, and fittingly for this event is a former aircraft maintenance engineer at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, Tyler Carroll.
Susan Faber and Dean Yoon complete an all-American top 3, in fact top 6 with the two other contenders being the short stacks of Jordan Knackstedt (Canada) and Jose Annaloro (Venezuela), but my favourite name among the FT is Uriah Grossglauser.
All 4 British players who entered Day 2 lasted long enough to cash but we lost them at pretty regular intervals during the day - Andrew Fields went out in 224th ($722), Robert Ludwig was 175th for $803, Jonathan Walker took home just over a grand in 93rd and the departure Garry Stevens-Smith in 50th for $2111 saw the end of the British challenge.
Event 72 - $10K Limit Hold'em Championship, Day 2 of 3, 118 entries
Eight late entries made the field size just tip over last year's total and meant that the first prize would be $306K.
Fifteen players are still looking towards that $306K (and of course the bracelet) with envious eyes, with Mike Lancaster the only player with over a million chips in his bag.
Second place belongs to Juha Helppi who according to Wikipedia was part of the Finnish national paintball champions on four occasions, and third is Josh Arieh whose paintball expertise is unknown but has exhibited enough poker skills over the years to win 2 bracelets (but none for the last 14 years).
Eli Elezra is still in with a chance of winning his fifth bracelet (and second this series) but none of Messrs Glaser, Rutter or Gray made the cash for GB.
With late reg still open to the start of Day 2, the field size is just 4 down on last year's figure so matching that field size is still a possibility.
With the kafuffle over the opening of the new session of the European Parliament, we note that the first player out after the bubble burst was former MEP Tony G. He'll have more time on his hands to play poker now his party failed to get enough votes in the Lithuanian European Elections in May.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 1A of 10,
The biggest tournament not in terms of numbers or buyin but definitely in prestige kicked off in traditional fashion with the previous years winner John Cynn getting the dealers to "Shuffle Up And Deal".
The Day 1A Chip leader is Bryan Campanello, with Timothy Su and Quentin Roussey in the second and third places.
I can't see a figure for Day 1A entries, but it must be way up on last year's 915 as we have more than that (960) through to Day 2.
Two former ME winners, Chris Moneymaker (2003) and Qui Nugyen (2016) both progressed, as did Billy Baxter, Alex Foxen, Jeffrey Lisandro, Erik Seidel and Brian Hastings.
From a British perspective, Craig McCorkell, Matthew Moss and Stephen Chidwick got plenty of coverage on the feature tables and are all in Day 2. Ben Philipps is the best placed of the GB contingent in 28th, with plenty of others through led by Jack Sinclair, Michael Kane, Martins Adeniya, Barny Boatman, Dennis Rubba, Andrew Hulme, Arron Woodcock all in the top 300, and among the middle stacks Simon Deadman, and with below starting stacks Tony Bloom, James Dempsey and Toby Lewis.
One British player who isn't through is Liv Boeree, she was knocked out of the Main Event by her boyfriend Igor Kurganov. Cue some awkward moments in that household I guess. Kurganov has at least put those chips to good use as he ended the day with over double the 60K starting stack.
TV coverage tonight is only from 2am to 4am, then they switch to covering the Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Event 74 - $3200 WSOP.com Online NLH High Roller, 1 Day Event
Brandon Adams has been making WSOP cashes since 2005, is a lecture and graduate of Harvard and has had a number of six-figure cashes over the last couple of years so it was a little bit of a surpise to me that he hadn't previously won a bracelet.
He put that right by winning the penultimate online event of the 2019 WSOP.
Playing under the alias "DrOctagaon" he beat Nabil Cardoso heads-up and Vladimir Alexandrov in third, but the big hand of the FT was 5-handed when Adams' pocket aces eliminated Michael Vanier and virtually eliminated 2-time bracelet winner Calvin Anderson and from that point the result was rarely in doubt.
To start today
None, but it is Day 1B of the main event.
I gather there were an astonishing 1,325, almost 50% up on last year, despite Day 1A being Independence Day. Extraordinary.
Event 70 - $5K NLH 6-max, Day 4 of 4, 751 entries so far
It's the first bracelet for Joao Vieira (together with $785K) and a fourth ever Portuguese bracelet.
Holding the chip lead at the end of both Day 2 & Day 3, he lost the lead at points in the day but as the field of 6 got thinned out, he was back at the top and managed to convert that chip lead in to the win.
2009 ME winner (and 4-time bracelet holder) Joe Cada had a small lead as heads-up play commenced, but and up-and-down straight draw got there on the river for Vieira on the fourth hand saw lots of chips change hands and five hands later it was all over when Vieira picked up AK and Cada AQ and the board ran out Jack high.
Jamie O'Connor was the only British player left, managing third place and his best ever live cash (nearly $318K) but he was another victim of Vieria, who this time only needed to get as far as the turn card to come from behind.
Event 71 - $500 Salute to Warriors NLH, Day 2 of 3, 1723 entries
No action on Thursday, it was a "rest day". They resume on Friday.
Event 72 - $10K Limit Hold'em Championship, Day 2 of 3, 118 entries
"Suomi, Suomi" chanted the rail as Juha Helppi won an extended heads-up match with Mike Lancaster to take his first ever bracelet (and the small matter of $306K).
Over four hours earlier, Tommy Hang was busted when both him and Helppi made a flush, Hang's the 10-high flush but unfortunately for him, Helppi had the nut flush.
Josh Arieh finished 6th, John Racener 11th and Eli Elezra 12th. Elezra has been showing all month with a USA flag against his name to reflect his residence I guess but now has the Israeli flag to properly represent his nationality.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 1B of 10, 3250 entries so far
1915 entries on Day 1B so that makes the total with 1C and late reg (to the start of Day 2 for the first time) still to come.
A full report to come but early indications are that we have a British leader - Adam Owen.
Five former winners played 1B and all made it through - Chris Ferguson, Joe Hachem, Greg Merson, Greg Raymer and Ryan Riess. Hachem's son Daniel also progressed, with more than double the chips of his more famous father.
Looks like the TV coverage tonight is from 1:00am to 5:30, no Hot Dog Eating Contest to get in the way tonight though I see this is getting a repeat during the day but the poker isn't. Priorities BT Sport/ESPN, priorities!
To start today
None, but it is Day 1C of the main event and the Salute to Warriors resumes.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 1B of 10, 3250 entries so far
I mentioned before that Adam Owen was the Day 1B chip leader, in fact it's a British 1-2 as Gary Blackwood has bagged the second biggest stack.
Several other GB players with very healthy stacks - Carsten Hansen lies 11th, Thomas Drinkwater is 16th, Yudhishter Jaswal lies 34th and Jan Eric Schiwppert is 39th.
Furthern down, some GB names I've picked out include David Maudlin, Ben Dobson, Joel Isla, Harry Lodge, Alex Goulder, Nicholas Marchington, Conor Beresford, Leo Worthington-Leese, Sam Razavi, Roberto Romanello, Fraser McIntyre and John Duthie and there's plenty of others among the 1416 qualifiers.
From outside the UK, the winner of Event 44, Ash Moshe sits in third spot with Allen Kessler just two spots further back. Barry Hutter, fresh from his FT earlier on today bags more than three times his starting stack while final tablemate Olivier Busquet is also just over that mark.
Former Main Event FT'er John Hesp won't be repeating that feat, as the colourfully attired player from Bridlington was eliminated, as were recent bracelet winner Anthony Zinno, both the Ott twins, Mike Sexton, Pierre Neuville, Ben Dobson and Sam Grafton.
Think I made the original mistake some weeks ago, after which the domino effect came into play.
The WSOP didn't quite get the fairy story they wanted from this event; that a US Military Veteran would win it, but I suppose they got the next best story, the first female win in an Open Event this year.
71-year old Susan Faber has really only been playing the game for about 10 years, and regularly plays events when the WSOP circuit visits her nearest events in North Carolina and had one earlier WSOP proper cash (earlier this summer). The $121K is by far the biggest cash of her career.
She only took five hands heads-up to finish off Rob Stark, with Dean Yoon having departed in third. Faber eliminated her final four tablemates, including Day 2 chip leader (and the last Vet standing), Taylor Carroll who ended up in 5th spot
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 1C of 10, 8127 entries so far
Nearly 5000 players decided to play Day 1C, taking the total figure so far to over 8000, the second highest figure and with late reg open until the start of play today for Day 2AB and tomorrow for 2C, there's a slight chance that the all-time record of 8773 which dates back to 2006 could be broken.
So what happened on Day 1C? Not one but two players were disqualified (one for stealing someone else's chips, one for dropping his trousers and throwing a shoe at the table hitting one of the other players). Play was suspended for a while due to the effects of the earthquake in California, and Phil Ivey was bust within the first half of Level 1. Just your regular day in the Main Event.
3647 players made it through the five levels of play with James Henson from Tiki Island which sounds like something from Disneyland but is actually a village off the coast of Texas. The big names start at Position 2 with Mike "Timex" McDonald, and in third place is Joshua Ray.
The highest placed GB player is Barry Donovan who sits with 280K chips (starting stack was 60K) in 6th spot. Andrew Pantling, Jack Salter, Kenneth Broad, Carl Shaw, Andrew Fields, Juan Sanchez, Charles Combes, Sean Mills, Chris Brammer, Raul Manzanares, Gilad Gutkin, Thomas Ward and Stuart McNally all line inside the top 300.
Lower down a quick search through those with "GB" against their names adds the likes of Peter Linton, Jason Gray, Philip Long, Alexander Zeligman, Guy Taylor (I mentioned a week or two ago about his record in massive field tourneys), Sam Trickett (playing his first event of the year), Max Silver, Ben Heath, Jake Cody, Sunny Chattha and Louis Salter. Niall Farrell and Stuart Rutter both have barely over half their starting stack, with Talal Shakerchi and Michael Kane just under that mark.
Some former winners battled through - reigning title holder John Cynn, Joe McKeehan (who was at the table when the first disqualification happened), Scotty Nguyen, Jim Bechtel, Johnny Chan and 2002 winner Robert Varkonyi. We did lose our first former winners though - Jamie Gold, Joe Cada and Martin Jacobson
A decent amount of coverage on TV tonight, and starting at not too bad of a time - midnight to 4:30 if I'm reading the programme guide correctly.
We still haven't seen the entrance of the Poker Brat Phil Hellmuth yet, he's been off on vacation to Macchu Pichu and the Galapagos Islands, along with actor Rob Lowe and owner of the Golden State Warriors and LA Dodgers Peter Guber. He hasn't indicated yet whether he'll be back in time from South America to play the Main.
To start today
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, 4 Day Event, 3 starting flights Sat/Sun/Mon
A man named Su!
Not as many distractions as the previous day, so the poker could take centre stage. The day ended after the regulation 5 2-hour levels with Boston, Massachusetts native Timothy Su bagging the biggest stack ahead of Tony Blanchandin of France and Germany's Anton Morgenstern in third. Morgenstern has 4 6-figure cashes in his career, including a run to 22nd in the 2015 ME but has yet to win big NLH live event.
That doesn't apply to Qui Nguyen of course. He won the 2016 Main and after delivering today's "shuffle up and deal" he proceeded to win pot after pot and ends Day 2 with a very tidy 602K in chips.
Florian Duta is the first player listed with "GB" against his name, but in reality he's a Romanian who lives in Birmingham so the honour of top Brit (out of about 50 who've qualified) goes to Gary Blackwood who has two previous WSOP Cashes, neither for more than $2000.
Other GB names inside the top 400 are Marc Foggin, Day 1 chip leader Adam Owen, Barny Boatman, Fraser MacIntyre, Nicholas Marchington, Joshua Boulton, Yudhishter Jaswal, Michael Kane, Craig McCorkell, Timothy Flanders, Jack Maskill, Leo Worthington-Leese, Andrew Martin, Arron Woodcock, Cyril Andre, Armin Ghojevand, Thomas Drinkwater, Mitchell Johnson, Philip Clarke, Robert Heidorn, Alex Goulder, Ben Dobson, Charlotte Godwin and Conor Beresford
While Nguyen moved on, four former winners didn't. Chris Ferguson, Greg Raymer, Greg Merson and Ryan Reiss all will have to wait until next year to try and get a second win.
Picking a few more players who are still in leads me to Shaun Deeb, Allen Kessler, Jeffrey Lisandro, Asi Moshe, Neil Blumenfield, Todd Brunson and Brian Hastings. Doubtless there are plenty more well known names lurking as well.
About a hundred players took advantage of the late reg being extended to the start of today, the WSOP are expecting slightly more than that for the start of Day 2C, and then we'll know the exact size of the field, the prizepool, and the massive first prize.
Phil Hellmuth has tweeted a video of a Giant Galapagos Tortoise with the logic that a tortoise (implying not the hare) always wins in NLH and that he is back and ready to enter Day 2C.
The TV coverage starts right from the start of play tonight - 7:30 UK time to 11:00pm, of course that's with cards on a 30-minute delay, cards are actually in the air at 11am Vegas time, 7pm BST.
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, 4 Day Event, Day 1A, 702 entries so far
With considerably lower media spotlight, the first post-Main Event tournament started with the first of three starting flights attracting just over 700 players, of whom 240 made Day 2.
France have been coming on strong during the second half of the WSOP, including here where Leandry Ainonkpo has a massive lead, his 726K well ahead of Mark Eddleman's 464K and Schahin Ghiai with 409K in third.
John Hesp will be disappointed that he busted out of the Main Event (as will ESPN) but he's having a go here and lies 47th and top Brit. Shola Akindele, Daniel Myers, Irene Albarran, Gareth James, Barry Grime, Damien Le Goff, Graeme Ladd, Simon Higgins and Niall Murray all made Day 2 and now have a couple of days off.
I can't see many names that I recognise, Valentin Vornicu, David "ODB" Baker and Victor Ramdin are about it.
To start today
Event 76 - $800 WSOP.com Online NLH 6-max, 1 Day Event
A milliard reasons to dream
344 players bought in just in time to start Day 2C, making the final number of players 8569, the second most in Main Event history, and bringing the first prize to a round $10 Million. The min-cash remains at $15000 for the players who finish 1063-1268 inclusive as to raise this by so much as a single dollar would have tax implications.
Does anyone remember when there was a difference between different versions of a billion? In some countries a billion was a million million, in others it was a thousand million (and that latter usage has now become standard). Well in some countries where the former usage was common, the word for a thousand million was a "milliard". We've got about half a milliard chips in play but a Milliard in the chip lead at the end of Day 2C - Julien Milliard from Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. He has almost a million chips, ahead of Czech player Vlastimil Pustina and another American Andrew Brokos.
We have to look all the way down to 44th to find the best British player, Mark Teltscher who has about half Milliard's chips. The next group of Brits includes Barry Donovan, Philip Long, Daniel Charlton, Andrew Pantling, Luke Brereton, Kenneth Broad, Sean Mills, Jack Salter, Chris Determeyer, Christopher Sly, Jonathan McCann, Alexander Zeligman, Laurids Nielsen, Richard Kellett, Christopher Gatley, Louis Salter, Thomas MacDonald, Samuel Goodman, Oliver Price, Carl Shaw and Thomas Seaman all of whom like in the top 500 with a few names from further back in Jake Cody, Usman Siddique, Tom Hall, Jason Gray, Peter Linton, Paul Ephremesen and Max Silver.
Phil Hellmuth late registered, turned up about 45 minutes late and then proceeded to bluff of three-quarters of his chips pretty quickly and didn't stop mumbling to himself and anyone else who'd listen until he finally got eliminated.
He wasn't alone in former winners getting busted. Robert Varkonyi, Jerry Yang and Scott Blumstein also found themselves on the rail, leaving by my reckoning eight ME winners still in (Chan, Bechtel, Nguyen, Moneymaker, Hackem, McKeehen, Nguyen and Cynn). The first Nguyen is of Scotty Nguyen who delivered the "shuffle up and deal baby!" at the start of play.
Among those who did make it through, former final tabler Tom Cannuli lies inside the top 10, Kathy Liebert is 20th just ahead of Adam Friedman and Jeff Madsen is 41st. Also with decent stacks are Calvin Anderson, Bertrand Grospelier, David "ODB" Baker and another who has been all the way to the FT, Cliff Josephy.
After the 2 Day 2s, 2880 players are still involved and will all combine now for Day 3 where the TV coverage isn't at as kind of time for UK viewers, action on BT Sport/ESPN from 3am-7am.
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, 4 Day Event, Day 1B, 702 entries so far
The chip lead changed in the last level of Day 1B, Stefan Ivanov winning a huge hand to vault himself into the number one position. The Bulgarian has the lead from Hophuong Loy and Joris Ruijs.
With a lot of players still involved in ME action, there was still a number of better-known casualties from the Big One who decided to play the Little One, Vlaidimir Geshkenbein, Daniel Ott, Mike Sexton, both Barry and Allyn Shulman, Michael Mizrachi and Chris Ferguson.
505 players made it through of whom Tamer Kamel appears to be Top Brit, with William Overmire, Brian Leddy, Mohammed Suhail and Waikiat Lee the next best placed.
Event 76 - $800 WSOP.com Online NLH 6-max, 1 Day Event, 1560 entries
This one has gone to Shawn Buchanan ahead of David "Bakes" Baker and Hunter Gebron. The Canadian is a very familiar pro player, having over $6m in live earnings, but this is his first bracelet.
This was the final online event of the 2019 WSOP.
To start today
Event 77 - $3K Limit Hold'em 6-max, 4 Day Event
08/07/19 Event 90 - $50K High Roller NLH, 3 Day Event. This event was a late addition to the schedule, hence why it is out of sequence in terms of event numbers.
From a chip and a chair to chip leader inside a day
Preben Stokkan had a pretty good start to Day 3, doubling his stack from 93K to 180K or so inside the first level. Then he tried a bluff with all but 5K of his stack, was over-shoved and had to fold, thanking his lucky stars he hadn't shoved that last 5K chip in too, and was left with the proverbial "chip and a chair" at the first break of the day. It wasn't the lowest denomination chip, but it was just a single chip.
From then on, he didn't look back, and a huge hand just before the end of the night brought him to a total of 2.184 million, the biggest stack in the room and the only player over 2 million in chips.
Hand for hand play wasn't needed; while they were getting all the hands paused to start hand-for-hand, on one of the last tables to get ready, Ryan Pochedly (who had been on the feature table a couple of days ago) lost all his chips when Julien Pineda rivered trip sevens. As has become traditiona, Pochedly was given a free entry to next year's ME as a consolation, but Jack Effel was able to say "with 1286 players left in the 50th World Series Of Poker Main Event, you are all IN THE MONEY" leading to no doubt the cheering and mutual back-slapping that has become the norm when the bubble bursts in the Main Event. Play was then immediately called off for the night with just over 6 minutes in the level.
Behind Stokkan, Andrew Brokos and Ryan Dodge lie second and third with Galen Hall the first former bracelet winner in 4th.
We lost former winners Scotty Nguyen, Joe Hachem and John Cynn during the day (though Hachem's son is still in), and Jim Bechtel too although I believe the player in question was Jim Bechtel jr not the former ME winner. That leaves just two trying to win their second Main, Chris Moneymaker and Qui Nguyen, plus Johnny Chan still alive with the possibility of his third.
There are a number of GB players with serious stacks - Daniel Charlton and Alexander Zeligman lie virtually neck-and-neck with 1.4m chips, Robert Heidorn has 1.2m and Oliver Bithell just over a million. I'm going to list all the players marked as GB from here on, for today I haven't the time to sift out any psuedo-Brits but I'll try and get that on from tomorrow.
So, in chip order:
Max Silver
Marc Foggin
Christopher Sly
Thomas Drinkwater
Yudhishter Jaswal
Stuart McNally
Luke Brereton
Nicholas Marchington
Nikolay Ponomarev
Jack Maskill
Andrew Martin
Timothy Flanders
Philip Long
Carl Shaw
Laurids Neilsen
Pierre Joubert
Craig McCorkell
Steven Morris
Adam Owen
Jonathan McCann
Sean Mills
Simon Deadman
Jan Eric Schwippert
Alexander Clark
Gary Blackwood
Thomas Seaman
Louis Salter
Mitchell Johnson
Robert Warburton
Thomas MacDonald
Scott Franklin
Oliver Price
Christian Christner
Philip Clarke
Thomas Waters
Michael Kane
Peter Linton
Armand Matti
Samuel Goodman
Mark Teltscher
Barny Boatman
Robert McAdam
Chris Determeyer
Florian Duta
Conor Beresford
Joshua Boulton
Alex Goulder
Charles COmbes
Daiva Byrne Barauskaite
Guillermo Sanchez
Paul Ephremesen
Gilad Gutkin
Stephen Hay
Leo Worthington-Leese
Mauro Suriano
Raul Martinez
Adam Daniel
Cyril Andre
William White
Ben Dobson
Igor Dursel
Phew. All of the above have now guaranteed a min-cash of $15K.
A few other names still in - Jean-Robert Ballande, Joseph Cheong, Eoghan O'Dea, Ertic Baldwin, Tom Cannuli, Jay Farber and Gus Hansen.
TV coverage is scheduled to run from 12 midnight to 4am, note yesterday's show as delayed because ESPN in the US were carrying the overrunning MLB All-Star Home Run Derby, so their coverage started about an hour later (and also ran until an hour later than the scheduled finish time).
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, 4 Day Event, Day 1C, 5463 entries
A huge Day 1C took the starting field for the Little One for One Drop over the 5000 mark, with the chip lead for the day (but still well behind the Day 1A leader) in the hands of Nikolay Fay from Russia, with Darren Attebery and Kenneth Golden second and third.
The Moldovan resident in Northern Ireland, Dragos Trofimov, is the first player with "GB" against his name, but if you want a full Brit you've got to look down to 33rd where Sunny Chattha is listed. Several other British players survive, including Tsz Ho inside the top 100, George Demetriou and Calin Trif inside the top 200 and John Wright, Usman Siddique, Iaron Lightbourne, Sam Razavi and Will Kassouf and Ian Simpson among approximately 50 players from over here making it through Day 1C in total.
Two former ME winners are there - Jamie Gold and Greg Raymer, as are Shaun Deeb, seniors bracelet winner Howard Mash and Pierre Bounahara (son of former November Niner Bob Bounahara)
From the three starting flights, a little over 2000 players will return for the combined Day 2.
Event 77 - $3K Limit Hold'em 6-max, Day 1 of 4, x entries
More Limit Hold'em. Just what we need. Maybe not, with only 193 entries and only 57 making it through to Day 2.
Ron Carmona finished 17th in the $1500 version a few days ago, and he's in a position to do better here by being the Day 1 chip leader with Joshua Turner and Zachary Gruneberg second and third.
I know I often make the point that GB players historically do comparitively badly at Limit Hold'em but perhaps things are changing here as we have two inside the Top 8 overnight - Stuart Rutter is 4th and Patrick Leonard is 8th.
Dual bracelet winner Robert Campbell is one of the others through as are Dan Zack, Jeff Shulman, Greg Mueller, Chris Vitch and Joao Vieira.
29 will get paid (a min cash is $4571 and the first prize is $133K).
08/07/19 Event 90 - $50K Final Fifty High Roller NLH, Day 1 of 3, 109 entries so far. This event was a late addition to the schedule, hence why it is out of sequence in terms of event numbers.
A late and in some places controversial addition to the structure, 70 players have made 109 entries so far, just one below the similar event at the start of the series with late reg and re-entry open until the start of Day 2 that number should be surpassed.
Seth Davies has the early lead ahead of Dan Smith and first British name Elior Sion. The British challenge is very strong here, as Daniel Tang, Ben Heath, Ben Rolle, Chi Zhang, Talal Shakerchi, Canay Ekmen and Orpen Kisacikoglu make it 8 players listed as GB from the 44 qualifiers.
Of course at this buyin level plenty of the big hitters are present, Brian Rast, Ben Yu, Fedor Holz, Dan Shak and Daniel Negreanu amongst them.
To start today
Event 78 - $1500 PLO Bounty, 3 Day Event
Event 79 - $3K NLH, 4 Day Event
Eliminations have come thick and fast post-bubble; an hour and a half in and we've already reached the first ladder point.
British eliminations
$15970 Payout level
1023 Jack Maskill
1042 Cyril Andre
$15000 Min Cash
1148 Mauro Suriano
1164 Jan Eric Schwippert
1181 Daiva Byrne Barauskaite (had aces cracked by kings)
1182 Ben Dobson
1188 Leo Worthington-Leese
1209 William White
1213 Louis Salter
1264 Igor Dursel
Some other eliminations - Jeffrey Lisandro, Molly Mossey, Mike "Timex" McDonald, Martin Arce (no idea who he is but couldn't resist mentioning him), successive eliminations of Chinese players Yu Shen and Ye Shen in 1152th and 1153rd, the doubtless immaculately dressed Max Steinberg and double bracelet winner (dating back to 1995 & 2001) Steve Zolotow.
986 remain
...and all of the rest of the top updates of course
Online qualifier tops the chip listings
The Day 4 chip lead is held by Canadian Dean Morrone, who bagged almost 5 million chips at the end of the night. This means he still has over 200 big blinds, and with the currnet payout level at $34K he has already more than tripled his lifetime live earnings according to the Hendon Mob database.
Denmark have the runner-up at this point in Lars Bonding, with Michael Messick in third.
All three former winners who entered Day 3 had to leave the playing area and head to the payout cage, Chris Moneymaker and Scotty Nguyen were followed out of the event by the last remaining previous Champion, Qui Nguyen.
354 players did make Day 5, including Antonio Esfandiari, Todd Brunson, 2013 runner-up Jay Farber, Mike The Mouth Matusow, Daniel Hachem (son of...) and three-time Superbowl winner Richard Seymour. Allen Kessler is also through, albeit with a short stack, the first time he has cashed in 16 WSOP Main Events (although he has cashed in a WSOP-E ME).
There looks like there is a two-pronged British challenge in the top 10, but Robert Heidorn is a German resident in the UK so the honours for top Brit goes to Sean Mills who has also already exceeded his career live earnings.
Oliver Bithell lies 22nd, Alex Zeligman is 29th, Nicholas Marchington is 32nd, Chris Sly is 50th and Craig McCorkell 53rd, all with 2.5m chips or more. Lower down, we can also wish good luck to Daniel Charlton, Carl Shaw, Andrew Martin, Yudhishter Jaswal, Jonathan McCann, Mitchell Johnson, Thomas Waters, Luke Brereton, Max Silver, Thomas Seaman, Marc Foggin and Peter Linton as they all endeavour to make the FT and ultimately win the $10million first prize.
Just time for a snapshot of a few GB players we lost along the way
Michael Kane, Paul Ephremesen, Alex Goulder, Robert McAdam and Mark Teltscher all departed with slips for $34845.
At the $30780 level, we lost Timothy Flanders, Thomas Drinkwater, Simon Deadman and Barny Boatman, and for $27390 Gilad Gutkin, Stuart McNally and Oliver Price were casualties.
Poker on TV tonight from 1:00am to 4:00am and from 4:30am to 6:00 so plenty of Day 5 coverage.
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, 4 Day Event, Day 2, 6248 entries
The field was narrowed down to 412 players at the end of Day 2, with 4-time bracelet winner and last year's Player of the Year Shaun Deeb bagging the biggest stack at the halfway point.
Deeb is followed in second by Matt Souza and in third by Jeremy Dresch with the British challenge starting at 6th where we can find the name of Ian Simpson.
The next three "GB" names listed aren't actually British, so we look to 66th and find the name of William Overmire, who appears to be British resident in Australia (in fact he hasn't a single cash recorded in a UK based event). Rhys Jones, Usman Siddique and Sam Razavi are among the other British names still in.
Phil Hellmuth registered at the last minute, but didn't hang around for very long, but some of those who did make it through are David "ODB" Baker, Andy Bloch, Erick Lindgren, Mike Sexton and Loni Harwood.
Event 77 - $3K Limit Hold'em 6-max, Day 2 of 4, 193 entries
Only 6 left, so safe to assume this will be over within 3 days.
There's a Canadian in the lead in the Main, and one here too with Tu Dao leading from Alain Alinat, who appears to be a Frenchman resident in Thailand. In sixth place there is a rare appearance for a player from New Zealand on a final table - Jan Suchanek who will move in to second place in the all-time NZ money list whichever of the top 6 places he ends up in.
Both Stuart Rutter and Patrick Leonard registered a rare GB cash in Limit Hold'em, Rutter taking $5484 for 22nd and Leonard $6748 for 15th.
08/07/19 Event 90 - $50K Final Fifty High Roller NLH, Day 2 of 3, 123 entries.
71 unique players made up the 123 entries so there were plenty of re-entries involved here.
Brandon Adams won his first bracelet less than a week ago in Event 74, and he is in pole position for a second here, bagging up a stack that amounts to 75BB when he returns for the final table. Second is Adrian Mateos from Spain and Michael Addamo from Australia lies third. For the record the other players remaining are Danny Tang (from Hong Kong), Sam Soverel, Ali Imsirovic and Keith Tilston.
When there were 13 players left the chances of a GB winner were fairly decent, but one after another Talal Shakercki, Canay Ekmen, Ben Heath and Elior Sion all said their goodbyes and the event was bereft of Brits.
Event 78 - $1500 PLO Bounty, Day 1 of 3, 1140 entries
1140 have become 247 after day 1 of Event 78, with a British player well in contention - Richard Kellett from Chorley is in 2nd place overnight, trailing just Austria's Tobias Schwecht by a few thousand chips. Players from China and Japan fill the next two places before the first American, Jason Young from Suffern, New York.
A few notables remain - Jesse Sylvia, Bryce Yockey, Connor Drinan, Jeff Lisandro, JC Tran, Daniel Negreanu and Max Pescatori among them, while Kellett is joined by, among others, Timothy Chung, Paul Rigg, Joshua Green, Jerome Bradpiece and Toby Lewis flying the Union Flag.
Event 79 - $3K NLH, Day 1 of 4, 671 entries
148 qualifiers for Day 2 and we have a Magyar 1-2 as Vlad Darie and Andras Nemeth make it two Hungarians in the top two slots with Israel third in the shape of David Margi.
With all the focus on the main, and the 50K High Roller, this has gone under the radar in terms of NLH, but we have 8 British names to keep an eye on - Niall Murray, Patrick Leonard (fresh from his bustout in the Limit event), Chi Zhang, Damien Le Goff, Graeme Ladd, Tamer Kamel, Igor Dursel and Ben Dobson.
101 will make the money, with three-time bracelet winners Justin Bonomo and David Pham, two-time bracelet winners Kristen Bicknell and Athanasios Polychronopoulos plus Christoph Vogelsang, Rainer Kempe and Dan Zack (who is also still in Event 78) still looking to make that first checkpoint and then move on towards the FT.
To start today
Event 80 - $1500 Mixed NLH/PLO, 3 Day Event
Event 81 - $1500 Bracelet Winners Only NLH, 4 Day Event