Early Day 5 Main Event Update The first level of Day 5 has come and we've lost over 60 players in those two hours. It's not been a great level for the British players, as we've lost:
$38240 payout level 351. Thomas Seaman (apparently this is the son of former England goalkeeper David Seaman) 341. Peter Linton 323. Jonathan McCann 317. Marc Foggin (as part of a double knockout) 310. Max Silver 309. Luke Brereton (ran Queens into Kings)
We've also lost former chip leader Julian Milliard (now showing as Milliard-Feral) who bluffed off his last 1.5m chips, Cary Katz, Allen Kessler, former Final Tablers Tom Cannuli and Jay Farber, plus some of an already thin field of female players - Danielle Anderson, Jacqui Burkhart, Sasha Liu and April Shih
If this goes on, we might have to claim Robert Heidorn as "one of us" as he has recently moved more or less level with previous chip leader Dean Morrone. Sean Mills is more or less where he started, but Daniel Charlton, Oliver Bithell and Nicholas Marchington have all chipped up a little.
Early Day 5 Main Event Update The first level of Day 5 has come and we've lost over 60 players in those two hours. It's not been a great level for the British players, as we've lost:
$38240 payout level 351. Thomas Seaman (apparently this is the son of former England goalkeeper David Seaman) 341. Peter Linton 323. Jonathan McCann 317. Marc Foggin (as part of a double knockout) 310. Max Silver 309. Luke Brereton (ran Queens into Kings)
We've also lost former chip leader Julian Milliard (now showing as Milliard-Feral) who bluffed off his last 1.5m chips, Cary Katz, Allen Kessler, former Final Tablers Tom Cannuli and Jay Farber, plus some of an already thin field of female players - Danielle Anderson, Jacqui Burkhart, Sasha Liu and April Shih
If this goes on, we might have to claim Robert Heidorn as "one of us" as he has recently moved more or less level with previous chip leader Dean Morrone. Sean Mills is more or less where he started, but Daniel Charlton, Oliver Bithell and Nicholas Marchington have all chipped up a little.
Was that the guy at Sky Poker's Vegas SPT this year? If so, I hope he had a Sky Poker patch on...;)
Second Day 5 Main Event Update Down to a gross left in the Main Event, a couple of hours before the end of Day 5. It's possible they might play some extra time tonight to reduce the field a little as it appears they're a little behind schedule.
The current chip leaders are an international mix of Warwick Mirzikinian (Australia), Milos Skrbic (Serbia) and Kim Jiwoon (Korea).
Laurids Nielsen is listed on Hendon Mob as Irish, he sits inside the top 10 with two other Brits not Brits in Robert Heidorn and Florian Duta, plus one true homegrown Brit in Nicholas Marchington (who of course still is not Pompeynic).
Antonio Esfandiari has built a very nice stack, and also still in is Alex Foxen, Dario Sammartino, Jeff Madsen, Todd Witteles and recent bracelet winner, Brazilian pro Yuri Dzivielevski. NFL superstar Richard Seymour and son of former winner Daniel Hachem are also among the last 144, with the final female player being Jill Bryant.
Other than Marchington, Oliver Bithell is 31st, Sean Mills, Carl Shaw and Daniel Charlton are all in the 60s and Chris Sly is among the shorter stacks.
GB Eliminations to catch up on:
$50855 - Mitchell Johnson (187th), Andrew Martin (190th), Tom Waters (206th) $43934 - Craig McCorkell (236th), Alex Zeligman (247th), Yudhishter Jaswal (261st)
One player I wanted to mention just becuase of his name - Quentin Siffledeen from Canada. Sounds like a character from the Harry Potter series to me.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 5 of 10, 8569 entries Guess Su's back, back again. Timmy's back, tell a friend
It's not very often than an early day chip leader regains the lead in the Main Event this deep, but that's what Timothy Su did, and in style. A late run of big hands took him to over 19m chips, a long way clear of nearest rival, Canadian pro Sam Greenwood who bagged just under 12m.
Duey Dong lies in 4th spot, with Warwick Mirzikinian and Luke Graham also over the 11m mark.
Then we come to the top Brit - not-Pompeynic Nicholas Marchington. He bagged 10.8m which is still a very healthy 135BB for the start of Day 6.
After the "Plastic Brits" of Nielsen, Duta and Heidorn, we can find a few other GB names still vying for the massive first prize - Oliver Bithell bagged 5.5m, Daniel Charlton 4.1m, Christopher Sly 3.6m and Carl Shaw 1.6m
During the last couple of hours of Day 5 we lost NFL star Richard Seymour, the last woman standing Jill Bryant, Todd Witteles, Brian Yoon and Quentin Siffledeen. There was one more GB elimination too - Sean Mills went out in 113rd spot for $59295.
106 are still left in with the biggest name among them undoubtedly Antonio Esfandiari. "The Magician" is making his 4th appearance in the last 200 and sits with plenty of chips to play with. Others include Chris Hunichen, Garry Gates, Yuri Dzivielevski, Alex Foxen and 4-time bracelet winner Jeff Madsen.
I keep wanting to include a line about Mihai Manole having someone covered or Fan Fan being on the wrong end of a cooler, but there's still time as both those players are through to Day 6,
I can't see that there is any TV coverage tonight, I'll update later if that is wrong.
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, Day 3 of 4, 6248 entries Down to 48 from 412 on Day 3, with the chip lead belonging to Mike Dentale ahead of PierrePaul Pailin and Zachary Donovan.
A couple of Brits involved, both very accomplished players, Shola Akindele is 19th and Sam Razavi 41st, but not really too many well known names involved as this event comes to a conclusion.
Event 77 - $3K Limit Hold'em 6-max, Day 3 of 4, 193 entries Looks like they had a day off, so the FT will take place tonight.
08/07/19 Event 90 - $50K Final Fifty High Roller NLH, Day 3 of 3, 123 entries. Can we claim half a British bracelet here? Daniel Tang grew up in the UK and has dual UK/Hong Kong nationality but plays under the flag of the former British territory, and it is thus the second bracelet credited to HK after Anson Tsang won one last autumn in Rozvadov.
Tang beat Sam Soverel heads up to win the bracelet and over $1.6m, Soverel took home $992. Near namesakes Michael Addamo and Brandon Adams finshed third and fourth.
Event 78 - $1500 PLO Bounty, Day 2 of 3, 1140 entries 42 isn't just the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything but also the number of players who have made Day 3 of Event 78.
If I told you the chip leader was Kazuhiko Yotsushika, I would guess 99.9% of you would get his country of origin correct - he is from Tokyo, Japan. Second is Joao Simao and third Joseph Liberta.
Plenty of interesting names elsewhere in the 42 - Toby Lewis and Timothy Chung both represent the UK inside the Top 10, Jesse Sylvia and Bryce Yockey both also have decent stacks and lurking with the smallest stack of all is Daniel Negreanu.
Event 79 - $3K NLH, Day 2 of 4, 671 entries Yesterday we had two Hungarians at the top of the chip listings, well that's reduced to one today as Andres Nemeth sits alone atop the reports with nearly 2.9m chips, a significant margin over David Gonzalez and Jonas Mackoff.
There's at least one bracelet holder still in this - Michael Turneic, and one Brit - Patrick Leonard whose name I seem to have been typing a lot over the last couple of weeks. Perhaps this is the time for him to rack up a really deep run?
Event 80 - $1500 Mixed NLH/PLO, Day 1 of 3, 1250 entries Still quite a way from the money here as 188 will get paid and 340 players will resume action for Day 2.
Corey Wright is the chip leader ahead of two Las Vegans, Ramali Kusnadi and Chance Kornuth.
Robert is representing the Mizrachi family here and lies 6th just ahead of Shaun Deeb who seems to be playing just about everything to try and retain the Player of the Year Title. I can also see the likes of Anton Morgenstern, David "ODB" Baker, Sylvain Loosli plus a very strong GB contingent - Richard Gryko, Ben Dobson, John Kabbaj, Iaron Lightbourne, Philip Clarke, Peter Linton, Sam Welbourne, Barny Boatman, Philip Long, George Demetriou, Xizhe Yuan, Chris Moorman and Max Silver. Almost a "Who's Who" of GB Tournament Poker.
Event 81 - $1500 Bracelet Winners Only NLH, Day 1 of 4, 143 entries so far A very interesting cross-section of Bracelet winners, with just over 50 of them making Day 2 (late reg is open until the start of Day 2) with India's Nikita Luther the chip leader. She won her bracelet as part of the tag-team champions last June.
A couple of men who have won the biggest bracelet of them all, Chris Ferguson and Joe Cada, played and qualified from Day 1, with just one British name (who also won her bracelet in a tag team event), Liv Boeree.
To start today Event 82 - $1500 NLH Double Stack, 2 Day Event Event 83 - $100K NLH High Roller, 3 Day Event
Again, had to split into two because the full post exceeded the forum limit:
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 6 of 10, 8569 entries UrchinNic tops the chip listings as the race to the FT intensifies
We have a new chip leader at the end of Day 6, and I am glad to say it is Nicholas Marchington, a 21-year-old from Hornchurch who enters Day 7 as Numero Uno as they will play to a FT.
He's not exactly experienced in this sort of situation, in fact Hendon Mob have just the one cash recorded for him, $12K for making the top 20 of Event 53, the $800 Deepstack.
The second placed player, in contrast, has plenty of big time experience. Hossein Ensan from Germany has won an EPT and finished third in another, each for the equivalent of over $800K.
In third comes the Day 2a & Day 5 chip leader Timothy Su who benefited from a huge hand against Sam Greenwood where the Canadian's pocket aces could not hold up against Su's suited connectors.
In all, 35 players are still alive and it looks like it is going to be a long day (and well into the early morning) before the final 9 are confirmed.
There are still two other British players in the mix, Daniel Charlton lies 21st and Oliver Bithell 26th, plus German-resident-on-London Robert Heidorn one place further back.
We lost several "names" during Day 6, Jeff Madsen went out in 102, Mukul Pahuja 95th, Antoni Esfandiari 82nd, Daniel Hachem 79th, Florian Duta 57th, Chris Hunichen in 54th and GPI rated number one Alex Foxen in 40th, plus GB players Carl Shaw 101st ($59295) and Christopher Sly 53rd ($173K).
Five of the 35 played Day 1a, Ten played 1B and Seventeen 1C. That leaves three who took advantage of being able to buy in before one of the day 2s, Kevin Maahs, Hiroki Nawa & Warwick Mirzikinian. As an aside, the WSOP have corrected their error they have had for a couple of days as showing the latter from "New South Whales" in Australia.
As well as Day 2/5 leader Su, and Day 6 leader Marchington (obvs), Day 3 leader Preben Stokkan has also battled his way through to Day 7.
Action re-starts at 8pm our time and will continue until there's 9 left of everyone else falls asleep exhausted.
Thankfully, the TV coverage is back tonight, starting our time at 2am and scheduled to go on until 7am so I don't think we'll be able to watch the end of Day 7 live unless we subscribe to PokerGo.
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, Day 4 of 4, 6248 entries This one didn't finish inside the regulation 4 days, so 5 players will be heading back to the Rio to finish things off.
Brazil and Israel are of course represented among the 5, Fernando Karam is the leader and Liran Betito is 2nd.
The other three players are James Anderson, Shalom Elharar (both USA) and Marco Guibert (Argentina)
All 5 guaranteed $177K with the winner taking a massive $690K
Event 77 - $3K Limit Hold'em 6-max, Day 3 of 4, 193 entries Tu Dao takes one down for the ladies and for Canada. After coming close in the Ladies Event (4th place) a couple of weeks ago, she claimed her first bracelet and $132K.
After eliminating Ian O'Hara in third, Dao had the chip lead and though Alain Alinat briefly took top spot, she held that lead throughout most of the two hours that the heads-up match took, eventually winning after the players got in a raising war pre-flop, Alinat's KQ dominating Dao's K9, but a nine on the flop was all she needed.
Event 78 - $1500 PLO Bounty, Day 3 of 3, 1140 entries Guess what? Another event over-running to an extra day.
In this case 7 players are still battling for the win, with Maximilian Klostermeier from Denmark bagging the biggest stack, 10.2m chips which equates to about 64BB. It would not only be his first bracelet but his first WSOP cash, the amounts he has collected in bounties has already exceeded his recorded career live earnings.
In second place is David Callaghan from Ireland. We haven't had much Irish success this Series, perhaps Callaghan could kick-start a late rush.
Five Americans fill the FT, the best known of them being Bryce Yockey.
Event 79 - $3K NLH, Day 3 of 4, 671 entries The Hungarian domination of the earlier days has come to an end, with no Magyar presence among the Final 6.
We do have a British presence though, Patrick Leonard from up in the North East has made it through, sitting in 5th position.
The top two have achieved some separation from the others, David Gonzalez and Guillame Nolet each have more than double the chips in the stack of third-placed Ivan Deyra.
Event 80 - $1500 Mixed NLH/PLO, Day 2 of 3, 1250 entries I wouldn't be surprised to see this too extend an extra day as there are still 47 players left.
Four of the 47 are previous bracelet holders (Steve Sung, Ayaz Mahmood, David "ODB" Baker and Ankush Mandavia) but they are all some way behind the chip leader Francis Rusnak.
Gary Bolden (like Rusnak, from Las Vegas) is second, and Jerry Odeen from Sweden lies third.
Don't count out the Brits either, Peter Linton from Nottingham and Iaron Lightbourne from London are both in, the former having four times as many chips as the latter.
Event 81 - $1500 Bracelet Winners Only NLH, Day 2 of 4, 143 entries so far No fewer than 42 players entered before the start of Day 2, so a very respectable 185 former bracelet winners entered this very special, rake free, event.
Eight players are left, with the familiar name of Nguyen at the top of the overnight listings. But it's not Scotty or Qui, It's Tommy Nguyen who is the leader and brings forward a massive 116BB for the FT.
Shankar Pillai and Michael Gagliano both from the US chase the Canadian chip leader, Brett Apter is in no mans land in 4th and then we have four short stacks all with 18BB or less.
The only British player to cash was Chris Brammer, 24th for $2520, the same payout as the only former Main Event winner to cash, Ryan Reiss.
In contrast with some of the events above, this one has raced through to a FT, so this will finish within 3 days.
Event 82 - $1500 NLH Double Stack, Day 1 of 2, 2589 entries This should end today but with spare capacity on the featured tables after Event 81 finishes early and a day off in the main, an extra day wouldn't be too much of a surprise.
357 are left, headed by two former bracelet winners, Mike Leah & Will Givens, with Ray Vohra in third.
Also through - Greg Raymer, Ismael Bojang, Valentin Vornicu, Gordon Vayo, Phil Hellmuth & Joseph Cheong.
The British challenge is headed by Daniel Wendorf in 11th, accompanied by two Roberts Sherwood & Tinnion, Jason McConnon, Niall Murray and another Robert this time Robert Glaspool along with a few others.
Event 83 - $100K NLH High Roller, Day 1 of 3, 95 entries so far Just over half of the 95 remain, and the player who led the $50K high roller at one point is back at it again, Brandon Adams who finished 4th in that previous event and also won the online High Roller has nearly 3m chips ahead of Byron Kaverman in 2nd and James Chen in 3rd.
As you would expect plenty of familiar high roller names, Ali Imsirovic, Bryn Kenney, Danny Tang, Isaac Haxton, etc.
It wouldn't probably too much of a surprise to see some of the UK names involved either, Stephen Chidwick and Talal Shakerchi while Michael Zhang Sam Grafton are perhaps less often seen at this sort of buyin level.
We've also got 2 nationals of other countries but resident in the UK left, Orpen Kisacikoglu and Sergi Reixach.
To start today Event 84 - $1500 The Closer NLH, 2 Day Event, 3 starting flights Fri/Sat/Sun Event 85 - $3K PLO 6-max, 4 Day Event
First level of Day 7 down, and there's some good news and some bad news on the British front.
Nicholas Marchington marches (sorry) on and on. He has just won a huge hand to eliminate Luke Graham in 29th and added more than 10 million more chips to his total, he is now up to about 64million with his nearest challenger Timothy Su just below 40million. However, we've lost one of our contenders:
Bustouts 35. Corey Burbick - first few hands, Jonathan Dempsey moved all in from UTG with AQ, called by Burbick from the button with Jacks and a Queen on the river sealed Burbick's fate. 34. Stephen Parrott - first victim of the day for Marchington. Parrott was short entering the day, picked up AK on the button and shoved, Marchington didn't have to call for much in the big blind with Q10. Two more tens on the flop and a Queen on the turn left Parrott drawing dead. And please note, not one Parrott pun. 33. Thomer Pidun - three bet shoved with A8 against the bigger stack of Milos Skbric but the Serb had pocket jacks. Pidun couldn't improve and was eliminated 32. Daniel Charlton - the man from Macclesfield (wearing a Macclesfield Town shirt) three bet shoved with AQ but unfortunately for him Nicholas Danias had kings. Charlton picked up one Queen on the turn but it was not enough 31. Christopher Ahrens was short and shoved with pocket fives, but Alex Livingston had kings and the board ran out dry 30. Mario Navarro - A6 against Viktor Rau's AJ. Navarro picked up an gutshot draw on the turn but the outs missed and Navarro was gone. 29. Luke Graham - at the hands of Marchington (as noted above). Marchington's pocket Jacks made a full house on the river, the same card that gave Graham a nut flush for his AK of hearts. The money went in pre-flop, but it could have gone in at any time for the same result
All those players collected $261K, as will the next player busted, then the remaining 27 will ladder up to the $324K level.
$400,000 18. MIhai Manole (ROU) 17. Enrico Rudelitz (GER) 16. Austin Lewis
$500,000 15. Paul Dhaliwal (CAN) 14. Christopher Barton
$600,000 13. Viktor Rau (AUT)
Nicholas Marchington has suffered a major loss of chips to the point where he is one of the short stacks, he's been all in a couple of times with pocket sixes, one got through without action but was called the other time by Skrbic with AQ but a Jack high board saw him double up.
One of the 12 has been very deep in the ME before, MIchael Niwinski from Canada finished 15th in 2016. The chip leader is Hossein Ensan with Garry Gates and Timothy Su both still having over 100BB and are playing on the same table.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 7 of 10, 8569 entries The Final Table is set
Day 7 of the Main Event, sometimes the slowest day in poker, is over and we have our 2019 Final Nine, and there is a British player among the nine. More of that later.
Let's get back to where I had given the details of various exits, and start with
28. Yuri Dzivielevski. The Brazilian pro and recent bracelet winner three bet from the big blind with AK, unfortunately for him, the original raiser, Chris Barton had pocket aces and all the money went in. There was a King on the flop to give Dzivielevski some hope, but that was as good as it got for him and he was gone.
This led to a ladder to $324K and a full three-table redraw. Marchington was chip leader with 56m, Timothy Su had nearly 40m and Duey Duong and Hossein Ersan each had nearly 38m. The other GB player left in, Oliver Bithell was the short stack, but soon got a double up leaving him still in a perilous position, but at least a little wiggle room, but not for long.
27 Oliver Bithell. Went with AQ and was called by Su with pocket sixes. He gained some outs with a flop of 8J9 and a few more with a second eight on the turn but a 5 on the river ended his involvement in the Main Event.
Within a few minutes: 26. Zack Kroeper. Three bet with A9, but Marcelo Cudos understandably snap called with Aces. Koerper picked up a flush draw on the turn but it didn't come and the field was down to 25.
25. Hiroki Nawa. He'd been a short stack for some time, found A9 good enough to go with and was called by Preben Stokkan in the BB with K8 and an eight on the board sealed the Japanese player's fate
After the dinner break, within a couple of hands
24. Johnathan Dempsey. Another three bet shove, this time with A10, called by Dario Sammartino with pocket jacks. A 9-high board saw Dempsey hand in his microphone and pick up a payout slip.
23. Marcelo Cudos. Unlike the other bustout players above, when the money went in he was ahead with pocket jacks against Ensan's AQ, but a Q on the board saw the lead change hands and the last South American player was out.
22. Nicholas Danias. He shoved twice in quick succession without getting any callers, but the third time he got two. Danias had AK, Alex Livingston had A10 of clubs while the biggest of the three stacks, Austin Lewis had pocket 10s. All three players were interested in the 8JQ flop with two clubs, the turn was a blank but the King of Hearts on the river gave Livingston Broadway, a near triple-up and sent Danias to the rail and put a severe dent in Lewis' stack.
Michael Niwinski needed a double up and got it with AK against Barton's AJ to give himself a bigger stack just before blinds went up to 250K/500K.
Robert Heidorn and Mihai Manole played several hands against each other before the German resident in London doubled up through Manole and left the Romanian short.
21. Preben Stokkan. The former chip leader had 22BB and after a raise from Zhen Cai, shoved with AK. Cai had pocket tens and picked up a set on the flop to leave Stokkan drawing almost dead, and then actually dead a few seconds later.
On the main feature table, Ensan had won several hands and became the first player over 100m after winning a huge hand against Marchington, the British player trying a 25m chip bet bluff which Ensan snap-called.
20. Warwick Marzikinian. The Aussie had been very busy but was down to about 15BB when he went with pocket twos, Marchington calling him with AK. An all even flop of 6 8 10 saw Marzikinian stay ahead, but an ace on the turn saw the Brit take the lead in the hand and there was no two on the river to save Marzikinian, Marchington getting back some of the chips he'd lost four hands ago.
Kevin Maahs had been comparitively quiet and his stack dribbled down a bit, but found a double-up against Niwinski with the classic race situation of AK against QQ, in true Barry Greenstein style spiking an ace on the river.
19. Duey Duong. Duong was gone, gone, gone in a rare all-in that went all the way to the river for the chips to go in. The board was 3J2-7-8 when Su shoved for 37m chips, Duong called with an overpair, but Su had hit a set of twos and Duong's ME was over.
Another ladder to $400K, but in a hand on the other at the same time
18. Mihai Manole. Went all in with AJ, called by Garry Gates who had Manole covered (had to get that one in once) but the shortie dominated Gates with AJ vs A10. Not for long as Gates hit a 10 on the flop and despite Manole picking up Broadway outs with a Q on the flop, he had to walk away $400K the richer.
Another re-draw at two tables, the top stacks being Ensan 120m, Su 105m, and Milos Skrbic 47m. Marchington was in 4th spot at this point.
Main event from 17 players down to the Final Table.
With just 4 hands of the new tables being set
17. Enrico Rudelitz. The second shortest stack at the time found Pocket Kings and of course he only had one option, called by Sammartino with AQ. A 2-3-4 flop gave the Italian outs to the wheel, but he didn't need them as an ace came on the flop.
On the other table maybe a minute later
16. Austin Lewis. If Rudelits had been the second shortest stack at the redraw, Lewis was the shortest, and three-bet shoved with K10. Heidorn took his time but eventually called with A8, and in a cruel manner Lewis made a pair on the flop (KQ4), and a second pair on the flop (10) but Heidorn got his runner-runner Broadway with a Jack on the river.
Pay jump to a cool half a million dollars.
Again, in very quick succession
15. Paul Dhaliwal. AK against Sammartino's pocket 9s and a 9 on the flop, plus two sevens on the turn and river gave the Italian the Full House and eliminate Dhaliwal to leave two Canadians (Livingston & Niwinski) left.
Things then slowed down a little, with both Ensan and Skrbic chipping up by winning smallish pots.
14. Chris Barton. He'd been getting short for some time, but when you've got AK suited and there is a raise in front of you, things don't get much better for a short sack. The problem was that the raiser, Skrbic had pocket tens and called the shove and faded all five cards to knock out Barton.
Another ladder, the next two players to go would take $600K
Garry Gates is a well known figure in Vegas poker circles and he certainly had the biggest and loudest rail, and they were whooping and hollering when he doubled up through the chip leader with pocket kings against Ensan's AK
Marchington had been active throughout, and got a four-bet shove through against Cai, but lost all of his gains moments later when a flop bet from Skrbic forced him to fold.
Kevin Maahs was all-in again, and found another double up with Pocket Aces which were called by Marchington with AQ just after the blinds had gone up to 300K/600K, denting the Essex man's stack to about 25BB, and lost another 5m chips to Cai when he had to fold to a river bet.
13. Viktor Rau. Another three bet shove, from the Small Blind with Pocket Queens but Henry Lu's chips were in almost before Rau's forward motion had finished as he had Kings. A third King on the board ended the hand as a contest, and we were down to 12.
This is when the action slowed down, each table very aware of what was happening on the other table. Players were very cautious, but there were no really obvious stalling going on, and an onscreen graphic showed that at one point, each of the final two tables had played 61 hands so neither group of six players were gaining an advantage. Niwkinski almost-shoved one time but kept behind one chip in case anything serious was happening simultaneously on the other table, and then the next he shoved he didn't keep one behind, a tactic immediately noticed by Gates.
The first player to be at risk was Marchington. Most of the time it seemed to he him and Skrbic in hands together and it was here again, with the Brit down to 10m chips he shoved with sixes and was called by A10 but luckily for the Brit the board was kind and he doubled up. Soon after, Livingston also doubled through Skrbic (KQ held up against K4)
Chip leaders at a break - Ensan 118m, Su 76m, Gates 69m. Marchington was 9th with 18.5m.
Niwinski doubled up for what seemed to be the millionth time with pocket nines to put a small dent in Ensan's stack, and then we saw a sequence of hands with very few flops, let alone turns and rivers. Henry Lu shoved on Ensan a couple of times but got no action.
12. Michael Niwinski. Finally his luck ran out in a hand with Henry Lu. Niwinski went all-in with AK, Lu who had not much more than Niwinski's stack and would have been crippled with a loss, called with sevens. Lu was breathing much easier when the board came down 10-10-7 to give him a full house and there was no dramatic conclusion with Niwinski being busto.
The final pre-final money jump saw players in 10th and 11th claim $800K, but with 11 players left we had a little controversy.
Sammartino raised to 1.7 from UTG+1, Marchington shoved from the SB for 22m and Sammartino called. The cards were turned over with Marchington having the advantage of Queens over tens. The flop was dealt (8-high rainbow) but then play stopped, Sammartino realised that the amount to call he'd been told by the dealer was incorrect, instead of calling for something like 20BB, he'd called a 30BB bet and it took two tournament directors to determine that the call stood, with the board running out a harmless 6 & Jack. This took 10 minutes or so while the other table continued play and some people thought that due to the length of stoppage their table should have been paused too.
Anyway, after all this had worked itself out, the very next hand (on the table that had continued to play)
11. Henry Lu. A Lu bet, and a Gates three-bet pre, a Gates bet and a call on the flop, a Gates check followed by a Lu bet on the turn. Gates spent a lot of time thinking what to do before raising Lu all-in, and Lu himself then went into the tank for several minutes before calling. Gates had Lu dominated from the start with AJ against KJ, while the Jack on the flop gave each of them a pair. Lu needed one of the three remaining kings on the river, but it was the 8 of hearts and Gates had won by far the biggest pot of the ME so far of over 80m chips.
This brought the field down to the unofficial FT of 10, all rammed in together on the feature table. Leaders Ensan 169m, Gates 102m then a huge cap back to Cai 44m and Marchington 42m.
It took just four hands to being some action, it came down to blind against Blind and Skrbic shoved on Livingston, the Canadian had KQ and decided he was probably in front and so it proved, Skrbic had tried to pick up the blinds and antes with Q3 but failed and was lost about half his stack in the process. A run of raise and take it down pots followed, before in hand 129, we had the last hand of the evening.
10. Robert Heidorn. He hadn't featured in many big pots and had dwindled to the short stack and decided to go with KQ suited for his last 9m. Livingston iso-shoved for 22m from the button and turned over two red eights with Heidorn showing KQ. The flop was a Canadian-pleasing 987 but there was a sweat after a Jack on the turn gave Heidorn a gut shot, but the river was a 5 and the FT was set.
The 9 remaining players have a rest day/media day Saturday and will return on Sunday with the blinds at 500K/1m (and a Big Blind ante of 500K) so even I can work out how many BB each player has in their stack.
Seat draw is
1. Hossein Ensan (GER) 177m 2. Nicholas Marchington (GBR) 20m 3. Dario Sammartino (ITA) 33m 4. Kevin Maahs (USA) 43m 5. Timothy Su (USA) 20m 6. Zhen Cai (USA) 61m 7. Garry Gates (USA) 99m 8. Milos Skrbic (SRB) 23m 9. Alex Livingston (CAN) 38m
I'll post tomorrow giving a little more about the players, but if Marchington wins, he will become the youngest ever winner of the Main Event, a few months younger than Joe Cada was when he won. (I believe Cada would have been younger had the tournament played to it's conclusion immediately not waited for the November Nine concept).
Sorry this isn't more than a brief rundown of the other events
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, Day 5 of 4, 6248 entries It was almost a third Brazilian bracelet of the summer, but Fernando Karem came up just short as the win went to James Anderson
A recent returnee to the game after a few years away, Anderson has three six-figure wins on his Hendon Mob page, but the $690K he picked up here now becomes his career high.
Third place went to Marco Guibert from Argentina making it a very succesful "Droplet" for South America.
Event 78 - $1500 PLO Bounty, Day 4 of 3, 1140 entries It's a rare bracelet for Denmark and for Maximilian Klostermeier who has only been a pro for a year and much prefers NLH to PLO.
David Callaghan achieved the best result of the summer for an Irish player when he came second for $109K (plus bounties) while Bryce Yockey made his 4th top ten finish of the series ended up in third spot.
Event 79 - $3K NLH, Day 4 of 4, 671 entries Allez France! In the first 30 events of the 2019 we had no French winners, now Ivan Deyra has followed up wins by Thomas Cazayous and Jeremy Saderne by taking down Event 79.
He won the event in style, holding a full house when David Gonzales tried to bluff him and made perhaps the easiest call of his career to win his first bracelet and $380K, by far the biggest cash of his life.
Patrick Leonard had his highest WSOP finish to date when he went out in 4th with a very tidy pink slip for $114K.
Event 80 - $1500 Mixed NLH/PLO, Day 3 of 3, 1250 entries As I posited yesteday, this has overrun to a 4th day with 7 players left. The leader is Ayaz Mahmood, with Lucas Greenwood and Jeremy Kotter in second and third but the British interest lies in the player in 5th spot, Peter Linton.
Linton is getting his 4th cash of the series (including a $38K cash for a decent run in the ME), and like Anderson (see Event 75) took a long break from the game with no cashes recorded between May 2013 (when he had his highest cash, $487K from the ill-fated International Stadiums Poker Tour in London) and June 2017.
Iaron Lightbourne was one of the early Day 2 casualties, finishing 34th for $6506.
Event 81 - $1500 Bracelet Winners Only NLH, Day 3 of 4, 185 entries The unique event went to Shankhar Pillai who qualified for this by winning a $3K NLH event twelve years ago.
He beat Michael Gagliano (2016 $2500 NLH winner) heads-up with Tommy Nguyen (2018 $1500 Monster Stack) in third.
Event 82 - $1500 NLH Double Stack, Day 2 of 2, 2589 entries Just call me psychic, or perhaps the WSOP should ask me when determining how many days events will take?
Eight players remain going into extra time, the chip lead held by the wonderfully named Freek Scholten of the Netherlands from Darren Rabinowitz and two-time bracelet winner Barry Schulman.
The only other bracelet holder left among the final 9 is a winner in a Stud event, Tom Koral..
Pablo Campo was the last Brit standing, being the last player eliminated on Day 2 for $43K, while Gary Solomons, Yiannis Laperis and Daniel Wendorf all made the Top 50.
Event 83 - $100K NLH High Roller, Day 2 of 3, 99 entries Six players will fight it out for the High Roller led by Keith Tilston ahead of Day 1 leader Brandon Adams and Nick Schulman in third. Schulman was a regular in the ESPN/Poker Go live coverage earlier in the series but has been removed from the team, with different explanations for his disappearance depending on who you believe.
Daniel Negreanu has made another FT in 6th, with the two players in 4th and 5th also well known names Dominik Nitsche and Igor Kurganov.
With only 15 cashing, Sam Grafton made 13th spot for $171K and Sergi Reixach, a Spanish player who lives in Bournemouth getting $353K for 7th position.
Event 84 - $1500 The Closer NLH, Day 1A, 463 entries so far The Day 1A chip leader is Event 26 champion Roman Korenev, with Griffen Abel the only other player to bag a million chips at the end of the first of three Day 1s.
Another recent bracelet winner, Ari Engel lies third, with just 30 players moving on and no British names amongst them.
Event 85 - $3K PLO 6-max, Day 1 of 4, 835 entries After the British wipeout in Event 84 (at least the first flight), it's nice to say there is a British leader of Day 1 of Event 85.
Paresh Doshi, for it is him, has 359K chips bagged, ahead of Kenneth Lucas' 291K and Hao Chen's 287K.
Doshi isn't alone as Iaron Lightbourne, Max Silver, John Kabbaj, Benny Glaser, Fraser MacIntyre, Dimitri Holdeew and Matthew Smith are also through to Day 2.
Also still involved are Anton Morgenstern, David Williams, Leif Force, Scott Bohlman, Loren Klein, Bruno Fittousi, Robert Mizrachi, recent bracelet winner Juha Helppi and many more, in fact 173 in total will come back for more PLO.
To start today Event 86 - $10K NLH 6-max, 4 Day Event
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 7 of 10, 8569 entries A day off, which I'm sure all 9 will be grateful for.
Event 80 - $1500 Mixed NLH/PLO, Day 4 of 3, 1250 entries So, so close to another British bracelet as Peter Linton's run finished in a heads-up defeat to Sweden's Jerry Odeen
After third placed player Adam Demersseman was knocked out, Odeen had slightly less than a 2:1 lead, but the next eight hands would be in NLH, the game in which he probably had the advantage with Linton the better player in PLO.
Unfortunately for Linton, he never got to see another hand of the four card game, folding the first hand to a flop bet and three-bet shoving the second with 10-9 suited and was snap called by Odeen with the two red jacks.
An interesting flop of 2-8-J saw Odeen make a set, but gave Linton a gut shot, but the dealer turned over a 10 and a 3 with the final two cards.
Event 82 - $1500 NLH Double Stack, Day 2 of 2, 2589 entries This one also had a day off, and will return on Sunday for the extra Day 3.
Event 83 - $100K NLH High Roller, Day 3 of 3, 99 entries Daniel Negreanu's wait for a seventh bracelet will have to wait for a little while longer as he was the runner-up for a 10th time in a WSOP event, matching the record for seconds held by Phil Hellmuth.
He came from the short stack entering Day 3, and doubled up on five occasions, at least once against all the other players on the FT with the exception being the winner Keith Tilston
Tilston had also FT'd the $50K High Roller, and started Day 3 as the chip leader, but the only player without a bracelet, a hole in his CV he has now filled.
He took $2.792m for first, Negreanu $1.725 for second and Nick Schulman $1.187m for third.
Event 84 - $1500 The Closer NLH, Day 1B For the second day running, there is a complete absence of British players from the qualifiers for Day 2 of The Closer.
45 from elsewhere in the world did make it through, with Shaun Deeb (still with one eye on retaining the Player of the Year title) holding the chip lead.
Denis Gnidsah lies second and Jeff Gross third.
There are a few well known players trying to grab a bracelet late on in the Series, Mike Leah, Joe Cada and Michael Mizrachi among them.
Event 85 - $3K PLO 6-max, Day 2 of 4, 835 entries 24 left after Day 2 with John Richards, who took the lead midway through the day, the chip leader with a significant margin back to Abraham Faroni and Michael Kuney in second and third.
This is another event in which we won't see a British winner, the last GB player departing in 29th when Iaron Lightbourne was kncoked out (taking $12678). Other cashes went to Max Silver, Matthew Smith, Paresh Doshi, John Kabbaj while Benny Glaser was the bubble boy.
Recent bracelet winner Juha Helppi is still standing, as are Joseph Cheong and Brandon Shack-Harris.
After the British wipeout in Event 84 (at least the first flight), it's nice to say there is a British leader of Day 1 of Event 85.
Event 86 - $10K NLH 6-max, Day 1 of 4, 248 entries so far The last $10K event of the Vegas portion of the 2019 WSOP saw a high-quality field battle through 10 one-hour levels and at the end of play, 113 players still had chips in hand.
Felix Bleiker holds the chip lead, from John Andress and Yuri Dzivielevski who won Event 51 and had a very deep run in the ME.
Sam Greenwood also ran deep in the Main and is through to Day 2, as did Alex Foxen, and some other names through include Jennifer Tilly, Barry Hutter, Robert Mizrachi and Nick Schulman.
From a British perspective, Paul Fontan leads the challenge in 11th spot, both GB 2019 bracelet winners (Ben Heath and Stephen Chidwick) move on, along with Simon Deadman, Max Silver, Toby Lewis, Damien Le Goff, Niall Farrell and a number of those overseas-resident-in-the-UK players, headed by Sergi Reixach inside the top 10.
Daniel Negreanu hopped into this after losing his heads-up match, what odds another second place here?
To start today Event 87 - $3K HORSE, 3 Day Event Event 88 - $500 WSOP.com Online NLH Summer Saver, 1 Day Event I incorrectly stated we had already had the last online event of the series last week.
Plus Day 1C of The Closer and the resumption of the Main Event and Event 82.
The Final Table of the 50th World Series of Poker Main Event
There is 1 hour and 31 minutes left of Level 37, with the Blinds at 500K/1million, with a 1million Big Blind Ante. This a) makes working out how many Big Blinds each player has left a piece of cake, and b) means that each orbit will cost each player 2.5million chips.
The Day 8 play will take the field from 9 down to 6, which sounds like it shouldn't take too long, but with the huge payjumps involved and regular commerical breaks it could take some time.
Seat 1 Hossein Ensan Germany 177,000,000 The overwhelming chip leader is Iran-born German pro Hossein Ersan. He moved to Germany aged 25, and has been a recognisable name around European poker circles since 2013. He finished 3rd in an EPT Main Event in 2014 and went two better in Prague in 2015 where he won his biggest prize money to date, €754,510. He also won a WSOP Circuit ring in 2017. He rose through the field on Day 4 which he ended in 14th spot and has continued on a upward spiral for most of the time since.
Seat 2 Nick Marchington United Kingdom 20,100,000 The only Brit at the FT is a 21-year old virtual live rookie, with just the one result recorded on the Hendon Mob database, a 19th place in the $800 8-handed deepstack event for $12K. This though is on a whole different level and for most of the time, he's looked at home. He would be the youngest ever WSOP Main Event champion taking the record from Joe Cada (Cada would have held the record had the FT in his year played out straight away not held over to be the November Nine). He may not have much live experience, but he does have plenty of online history. For the first six days he moved up in the standings every day - 355 to 186 to 179 to 32 to 6 to 1, from where of course he couldn't go any higher, and as others increased their stack he goes to the FT as the short stack after losing a huge pot to Ensan on a bluff.
Seat 3 Dario Sammartino Italy 33,400,000 Sammartino is a highly experienced live professional from Naples with over $8 million in live cashes. He has stepped back a little in the amount he plays recently, and this seems to have done him a power of good as he's making his 3rd FT of the summer, including finishing 3rd in the $10K Horse event for $184K.He also had a good run in the $50K Poker Players Champioship. He has 15 different scores of over $100K, and one seven-figure payday when finishing third in the 2017 $111,111 High Roller for One Drop for $1.6m
Seat 4 Kevin Maahs United States 43,000,000 Perhaps the most anonymous player so far of the final 9, the 27 year old from Illinois is the only one of the final nine who took advantage of the new system where players could enter on Day 2. He has 10 live cashes on his record, 3 of them coming this year totalling $61K, all of them being at events held in the Mid-West. He was at risk late on Day 6 but patiently hang around and got his double up with Pocket Aces to build him a stack that would last him until the FT.
Seat 5 Timothy Su United States 20,200,000 One of the bigger characters of the early days of the Main Event, he was the chip leader on both Day 2 and Day 5. He has the smallest live cash total of the field, just $2467 gathered from three events, one of which was the Colossus (Event 61) where he picked up $927. By day, he's a software engineer whose hobies are playing the oboe, reading and listening to classical music. Not your typical ME final tabler.
Seat 6 Zhen Cai United States 60,600,000 Usually a PLO cash game player, the 35-year old has turned his hands to Live NLH rather well, with cashes in events dating back to 2008 although this his first WSOP cash since 2011. He is very good friends with last year's runner up Tony Miles who has been seen in Cai's rail over the last two days. He holds the third biggest stack entering the FT and was the player responsible for eliminating NFL star Richard Seymour on Day 5.
Seat 7 Garry Gates United States 99,300,000 Gates will undoubtedly have the largest and most vocal rail at the FT. He was the lead reporter for PokerNews, the firm that do most of the live updates from the WSOP that I rely heavily on when researching these posts, he then went on work for PokerStars as a Senior Consultant of Player Affairs for their live events, bringing him into regular content with some of the biggest names in the game, who are right behind him in his run to the FT. He will doubtless have been fully prepared by some of those big names over the last 24 hours. It's his 4th cash in the Main Event, his previous best effort voming in 2011 when he made it to 173rd spot.
Seat 8 Milos Skrbic Serbia 23,400,000 The fourth European at the FT, originally from Serbia but now resident in San Diego, California. Along with Sammartino, he has a million dollar score on his CV, a $1.06m win for finishing 2nd in the 2018 WPT Five Diamond event to Dylan Linde. He also has a WSOP ME FT to his name, the 2018 WSOP Europe Main Event FT where he finished 5th. He also has plenty of experience of high stakes cash games. Upfront, he seems to have been the most confident of the players, telling his friends not to bother getting to Vegas until Tuesday when the final 3 play out for the bracelet.
Seat 9 Alex Livingston Canada 37,800,000 Last but not least, Livingston has some experience of a very deep run in the ME to draw on, as he made Day 7 six years ago before going out in 13th. He had a good start to the ME, finishing inside the top 100 on both day 1 and day 2, but was never really among the upper echelons until the very late stages, in fact he entered Day 7 as the second smallest stack of the 35 players. He was the winner of the final hand of the night when he flopped a set of eights to eliminate Robert Heidorn and confirm the Final Table. The 32 year old has two cashes earlier in the Series and 15 in all dating back to 2011 in numerous variants of the game.
TV coverage starts on BT Sport/ESPN from 3am (on the normal 30-minute delay) and is scheduled to last until 5am, but I'm sure if play hasn't finished they will continue to show the action until play has ended for the day.
The 9th placed player will get $1m, eighth place takes $1.25m and 7th earns you $1.525m
Thanks to PokerNews and the HendonMob database for a lot of the content referenced in this posting.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 8 of 10, 8569 entries
With the intention to have just three bustouts on Day 8, things got going pretty quickly when on just the third hand Nick Marchington three-bet shoved with pocket tens, the original raiser Zhen Cai eventually calling the bet with AQ. A ten on the flop virtually sealed the deal and the Brit doubled up.
Hand 6, one of the shorter stacks, Milos Skrbic was faced with a decision for all his chips when Gates bet big ahead of him. From the BB, Skrbic with AJ, understandably thinking he was ahead of Gates' range from the SB but Gates had AQ and the Serbian was out in 9th for a cool million dollars.
Five hands later, Timothy Su shoved from UTG. Zhen Cai asked for a count, thought long and hard before folding but chip leader Hossein Ersan called. He had AJ and Su had pocket threes. Su couldn't have got a much worse flop than J55, there was a blank on the turn and another Jack added insult to injury on the river giving the German a full house. Su was out with a $1.25m payday.
Ensan moved over the 200m chip mark when he got a turn bet through against Kevin Maahs, but lost 11m of them not much later in a hand with Cai which went to showdown with both players having two pair.
After a break, Gates took another chunk of Ensan's chips on a hand where a pair of eights was enough to beat a pair of twos.
Hand 32, Ensan raised from the cutoff, Marchington three-bet all in for his last 14BB and Ensan snap called with two black kings, Marchington having A7. After a flop of J86, he turned some straight outs with a 6 but there was no help on the river and the last British player was out for $1.525m.
The WSOP then made the decision that as we'd had only about 90 minutes of poker, they'd carry on until another player was eliminated.
Alex Livingston won three smallish pots in a row to move into third spot, but still a long way behind the top two.
Hand 40, on a three-bet pre-flop hand, a board of 652 looked pretty uninviting but Cai shoved and Maahs folded.
On the very next hand, Cai lost those chips and more when Gates made a full house, slow playing it hoping Cai would commit himself but he lost somewhere near the minimum. Gates was now becoming a serious threat to Ensan's chip lead.
Cai continued to put chips in pre-flop but getting very little out of hands, and drifted down to become one of the bottom two with Dario Sammartino who was not very active at all.
Cai eventually picked up AK, and with a raise in front from Ensan and a call from Maahs, shoved. Ensan folded but Maahs with pocket nines took the chance and called. The board ran out Queen high with no flush possibilities, Cai was out ($1.85m) and play ended for the day with just 5 players in the running for the $10m first prize and the title of World Champion.
So we now have a very polarised table, with Ensan and Gates having massive stacks and the other three players only having 25% of the chips in play between them.
Both the two big stacks won 11 of the 56 hands today, Ensan adding about 31m to his stack but Gates added over 72m to his stack.
Blinds are 600K/1.2m with a 1.2m ante, they've about 35 minutes left before the price of poker will rise yet again.
I presume they'll stick with the original plan of having three players left at the end of tonight, but if we see two of the short stacks bust within the first half hour, who knows?
Event 82 - $1500 NLH Double Stack, Day 3 of 2, 2589 entries Tom Koral has been around the poker scene since 2005, and has recorded cashes (and decent ones at that) in a number of variants. But it was in good ol' NLH that he won his second bracelet and his biggest monetary prize ever ($530K) in Event 82.
He held a 3:2 leads heads up against the Netherlands' Freek Scholten at the start of heads-up and one massive point where basically Koral had ace-high (although technically the board was paired) and Scholten had King high saw him establish a lead that only got bigger as the match went on. Koral finished it in style with pocket aces.
Barry Shulman's bid for a third bracelet ended in third spot.
Event 84 - $1500 The Closer NLH, Day 1C, 2800 entries in total Hallelujah! At the third time of asking we finally got some British players through to Day 2, and in style two with Waikat Lee and Ian Simpson both inside the top ten.
Jack Salter, Usman Siddique and Ryan O'Sullivan make it 5 GB names through, with 196 in total from the three day 1s.
Day 1C was "won" by Tam Nguyen ahead of Steve Yea and Anton Wigg with Phil Hellmuth one of the other qualifiers along with Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier, KC Tran, Dylan Linde and Tom Franklin
This should finish today.
Event 85 - $3K PLO 6-max, Day 3 of 4, 835 entries Six left for the last PLO bracelet, with two big stacks (Millard Hale and Day 2 leader John Richards), two medium stacks (Alan Sternberg and Evengelos Kokkalis) and two less than 12BB stacks (Ka Kwan Lu and event 34 winner Joseph Cheong).
Event 86 - $10K NLH 6-max, Day 2 of 4, 272 entries This has raced through to just 16 players with potentially two days to go, with the chip lead held by Anuj Agarwal. He has just over 2m chips with Markus Gonsalves and Jeffrey Trudeau either side of 1.7m in second and third.
Ben Heath is one of two British players left (the other being Simon Deadman) and one of two former bracelet winners left (the other being short stacked Gal Yifrach)
The plan is to play down to 6, but as we've found out in the Main Event today, that could well change.
Event 87 - $3K HORSE, Day 1 of 3, 301 entries 127 of the 301 players survive Day 1 with defending champion Brian Hastings one of a large number of bracelet holders making it through.
They're all chasing the Day 1 leader Harold Klein, second placed Justin Liberto and third placed Yueqi Zhu.
Adam Owen, Patrick Leonard, Benny Glaser and Paul Sokoloff make up a strong British challenge, but just some of the names left in will give you an idea of the strength of the field - John Monnette, Chris Ferguson, Daniel Negreanu, Greg Mueller, Paul Volpe, Ismael Bojang, Jeff Lisandro, and Mike Matusow.
Event 88 - $500 WSOP.com Online NLH Summer Saver, 1 Day Event, 1859 entries The last online bracelet of the summer will live on the wrist of Taylor Paur, who claimed his second overall bracelet and a prize of nearly $150K.
He finished ahead of Swiss player Francois Evard with Satfish Surapeneni coming third.
To start today 15/07/19 Event 89 - $5K NLH, 2 Day Event
Comments
The first level of Day 5 has come and we've lost over 60 players in those two hours. It's not been a great level for the British players, as we've lost:
$38240 payout level
351. Thomas Seaman (apparently this is the son of former England goalkeeper David Seaman)
341. Peter Linton
323. Jonathan McCann
317. Marc Foggin (as part of a double knockout)
310. Max Silver
309. Luke Brereton (ran Queens into Kings)
We've also lost former chip leader Julian Milliard (now showing as Milliard-Feral) who bluffed off his last 1.5m chips, Cary Katz, Allen Kessler, former Final Tablers Tom Cannuli and Jay Farber, plus some of an already thin field of female players - Danielle Anderson, Jacqui Burkhart, Sasha Liu and April Shih
If this goes on, we might have to claim Robert Heidorn as "one of us" as he has recently moved more or less level with previous chip leader Dean Morrone. Sean Mills is more or less where he started, but Daniel Charlton, Oliver Bithell and Nicholas Marchington have all chipped up a little.
Down to a gross left in the Main Event, a couple of hours before the end of Day 5. It's possible they might play some extra time tonight to reduce the field a little as it appears they're a little behind schedule.
The current chip leaders are an international mix of Warwick Mirzikinian (Australia), Milos Skrbic (Serbia) and Kim Jiwoon (Korea).
Laurids Nielsen is listed on Hendon Mob as Irish, he sits inside the top 10 with two other Brits not Brits in Robert Heidorn and Florian Duta, plus one true homegrown Brit in Nicholas Marchington (who of course still is not Pompeynic).
Antonio Esfandiari has built a very nice stack, and also still in is Alex Foxen, Dario Sammartino, Jeff Madsen, Todd Witteles and recent bracelet winner, Brazilian pro Yuri Dzivielevski. NFL superstar Richard Seymour and son of former winner Daniel Hachem are also among the last 144, with the final female player being Jill Bryant.
Other than Marchington, Oliver Bithell is 31st, Sean Mills, Carl Shaw and Daniel Charlton are all in the 60s and Chris Sly is among the shorter stacks.
GB Eliminations to catch up on:
$50855 - Mitchell Johnson (187th), Andrew Martin (190th), Tom Waters (206th)
$43934 - Craig McCorkell (236th), Alex Zeligman (247th), Yudhishter Jaswal (261st)
One player I wanted to mention just becuase of his name - Quentin Siffledeen from Canada. Sounds like a character from the Harry Potter series to me.
Guess Su's back, back again. Timmy's back, tell a friend
It's not very often than an early day chip leader regains the lead in the Main Event this deep, but that's what Timothy Su did, and in style. A late run of big hands took him to over 19m chips, a long way clear of nearest rival, Canadian pro Sam Greenwood who bagged just under 12m.
Duey Dong lies in 4th spot, with Warwick Mirzikinian and Luke Graham also over the 11m mark.
Then we come to the top Brit - not-Pompeynic Nicholas Marchington. He bagged 10.8m which is still a very healthy 135BB for the start of Day 6.
After the "Plastic Brits" of Nielsen, Duta and Heidorn, we can find a few other GB names still vying for the massive first prize - Oliver Bithell bagged 5.5m, Daniel Charlton 4.1m, Christopher Sly 3.6m and Carl Shaw 1.6m
During the last couple of hours of Day 5 we lost NFL star Richard Seymour, the last woman standing Jill Bryant, Todd Witteles, Brian Yoon and Quentin Siffledeen. There was one more GB elimination too - Sean Mills went out in 113rd spot for $59295.
106 are still left in with the biggest name among them undoubtedly Antonio Esfandiari. "The Magician" is making his 4th appearance in the last 200 and sits with plenty of chips to play with. Others include Chris Hunichen, Garry Gates, Yuri Dzivielevski, Alex Foxen and 4-time bracelet winner Jeff Madsen.
I keep wanting to include a line about Mihai Manole having someone covered or Fan Fan being on the wrong end of a cooler, but there's still time as both those players are through to Day 6,
I can't see that there is any TV coverage tonight, I'll update later if that is wrong.
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, Day 3 of 4, 6248 entries
Down to 48 from 412 on Day 3, with the chip lead belonging to Mike Dentale ahead of PierrePaul Pailin and Zachary Donovan.
A couple of Brits involved, both very accomplished players, Shola Akindele is 19th and Sam Razavi 41st, but not really too many well known names involved as this event comes to a conclusion.
Event 77 - $3K Limit Hold'em 6-max, Day 3 of 4, 193 entries
Looks like they had a day off, so the FT will take place tonight.
08/07/19 Event 90 - $50K Final Fifty High Roller NLH, Day 3 of 3, 123 entries.
Can we claim half a British bracelet here? Daniel Tang grew up in the UK and has dual UK/Hong Kong nationality but plays under the flag of the former British territory, and it is thus the second bracelet credited to HK after Anson Tsang won one last autumn in Rozvadov.
Tang beat Sam Soverel heads up to win the bracelet and over $1.6m, Soverel took home $992. Near namesakes Michael Addamo and Brandon Adams finshed third and fourth.
Event 78 - $1500 PLO Bounty, Day 2 of 3, 1140 entries
42 isn't just the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything but also the number of players who have made Day 3 of Event 78.
If I told you the chip leader was Kazuhiko Yotsushika, I would guess 99.9% of you would get his country of origin correct - he is from Tokyo, Japan. Second is Joao Simao and third Joseph Liberta.
Plenty of interesting names elsewhere in the 42 - Toby Lewis and Timothy Chung both represent the UK inside the Top 10, Jesse Sylvia and Bryce Yockey both also have decent stacks and lurking with the smallest stack of all is Daniel Negreanu.
Event 79 - $3K NLH, Day 2 of 4, 671 entries
Yesterday we had two Hungarians at the top of the chip listings, well that's reduced to one today as Andres Nemeth sits alone atop the reports with nearly 2.9m chips, a significant margin over David Gonzalez and Jonas Mackoff.
There's at least one bracelet holder still in this - Michael Turneic, and one Brit - Patrick Leonard whose name I seem to have been typing a lot over the last couple of weeks. Perhaps this is the time for him to rack up a really deep run?
Event 80 - $1500 Mixed NLH/PLO, Day 1 of 3, 1250 entries
Still quite a way from the money here as 188 will get paid and 340 players will resume action for Day 2.
Corey Wright is the chip leader ahead of two Las Vegans, Ramali Kusnadi and Chance Kornuth.
Robert is representing the Mizrachi family here and lies 6th just ahead of Shaun Deeb who seems to be playing just about everything to try and retain the Player of the Year Title. I can also see the likes of Anton Morgenstern, David "ODB" Baker, Sylvain Loosli plus a very strong GB contingent - Richard Gryko, Ben Dobson, John Kabbaj, Iaron Lightbourne, Philip Clarke, Peter Linton, Sam Welbourne, Barny Boatman, Philip Long, George Demetriou, Xizhe Yuan, Chris Moorman and Max Silver. Almost a "Who's Who" of GB Tournament Poker.
Event 81 - $1500 Bracelet Winners Only NLH, Day 1 of 4, 143 entries so far
A very interesting cross-section of Bracelet winners, with just over 50 of them making Day 2 (late reg is open until the start of Day 2) with India's Nikita Luther the chip leader. She won her bracelet as part of the tag-team champions last June.
A couple of men who have won the biggest bracelet of them all, Chris Ferguson and Joe Cada, played and qualified from Day 1, with just one British name (who also won her bracelet in a tag team event), Liv Boeree.
To start today
Event 82 - $1500 NLH Double Stack, 2 Day Event
Event 83 - $100K NLH High Roller, 3 Day Event
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 6 of 10, 8569 entries
UrchinNic tops the chip listings as the race to the FT intensifies
We have a new chip leader at the end of Day 6, and I am glad to say it is Nicholas Marchington, a 21-year-old from Hornchurch who enters Day 7 as Numero Uno as they will play to a FT.
He's not exactly experienced in this sort of situation, in fact Hendon Mob have just the one cash recorded for him, $12K for making the top 20 of Event 53, the $800 Deepstack.
The second placed player, in contrast, has plenty of big time experience. Hossein Ensan from Germany has won an EPT and finished third in another, each for the equivalent of over $800K.
In third comes the Day 2a & Day 5 chip leader Timothy Su who benefited from a huge hand against Sam Greenwood where the Canadian's pocket aces could not hold up against Su's suited connectors.
In all, 35 players are still alive and it looks like it is going to be a long day (and well into the early morning) before the final 9 are confirmed.
There are still two other British players in the mix, Daniel Charlton lies 21st and Oliver Bithell 26th, plus German-resident-on-London Robert Heidorn one place further back.
We lost several "names" during Day 6, Jeff Madsen went out in 102, Mukul Pahuja 95th, Antoni Esfandiari 82nd, Daniel Hachem 79th, Florian Duta 57th, Chris Hunichen in 54th and GPI rated number one Alex Foxen in 40th, plus GB players Carl Shaw 101st ($59295) and Christopher Sly 53rd ($173K).
Five of the 35 played Day 1a, Ten played 1B and Seventeen 1C. That leaves three who took advantage of being able to buy in before one of the day 2s, Kevin Maahs, Hiroki Nawa & Warwick Mirzikinian. As an aside, the WSOP have corrected their error they have had for a couple of days as showing the latter from "New South Whales" in Australia.
As well as Day 2/5 leader Su, and Day 6 leader Marchington (obvs), Day 3 leader Preben Stokkan has also battled his way through to Day 7.
Action re-starts at 8pm our time and will continue until there's 9 left of everyone else falls asleep exhausted.
Thankfully, the TV coverage is back tonight, starting our time at 2am and scheduled to go on until 7am so I don't think we'll be able to watch the end of Day 7 live unless we subscribe to PokerGo.
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, Day 4 of 4, 6248 entries
This one didn't finish inside the regulation 4 days, so 5 players will be heading back to the Rio to finish things off.
Brazil and Israel are of course represented among the 5, Fernando Karam is the leader and Liran Betito is 2nd.
The other three players are James Anderson, Shalom Elharar (both USA) and Marco Guibert (Argentina)
All 5 guaranteed $177K with the winner taking a massive $690K
Event 77 - $3K Limit Hold'em 6-max, Day 3 of 4, 193 entries
Tu Dao takes one down for the ladies and for Canada. After coming close in the Ladies Event (4th place) a couple of weeks ago, she claimed her first bracelet and $132K.
After eliminating Ian O'Hara in third, Dao had the chip lead and though Alain Alinat briefly took top spot, she held that lead throughout most of the two hours that the heads-up match took, eventually winning after the players got in a raising war pre-flop, Alinat's KQ dominating Dao's K9, but a nine on the flop was all she needed.
Event 78 - $1500 PLO Bounty, Day 3 of 3, 1140 entries
Guess what? Another event over-running to an extra day.
In this case 7 players are still battling for the win, with Maximilian Klostermeier from Denmark bagging the biggest stack, 10.2m chips which equates to about 64BB. It would not only be his first bracelet but his first WSOP cash, the amounts he has collected in bounties has already exceeded his recorded career live earnings.
In second place is David Callaghan from Ireland. We haven't had much Irish success this Series, perhaps Callaghan could kick-start a late rush.
Five Americans fill the FT, the best known of them being Bryce Yockey.
Event 79 - $3K NLH, Day 3 of 4, 671 entries
The Hungarian domination of the earlier days has come to an end, with no Magyar presence among the Final 6.
We do have a British presence though, Patrick Leonard from up in the North East has made it through, sitting in 5th position.
The top two have achieved some separation from the others, David Gonzalez and Guillame Nolet each have more than double the chips in the stack of third-placed Ivan Deyra.
Event 80 - $1500 Mixed NLH/PLO, Day 2 of 3, 1250 entries
I wouldn't be surprised to see this too extend an extra day as there are still 47 players left.
Four of the 47 are previous bracelet holders (Steve Sung, Ayaz Mahmood, David "ODB" Baker and Ankush Mandavia) but they are all some way behind the chip leader Francis Rusnak.
Gary Bolden (like Rusnak, from Las Vegas) is second, and Jerry Odeen from Sweden lies third.
Don't count out the Brits either, Peter Linton from Nottingham and Iaron Lightbourne from London are both in, the former having four times as many chips as the latter.
Event 81 - $1500 Bracelet Winners Only NLH, Day 2 of 4, 143 entries so far
No fewer than 42 players entered before the start of Day 2, so a very respectable 185 former bracelet winners entered this very special, rake free, event.
Eight players are left, with the familiar name of Nguyen at the top of the overnight listings. But it's not Scotty or Qui, It's Tommy Nguyen who is the leader and brings forward a massive 116BB for the FT.
Shankar Pillai and Michael Gagliano both from the US chase the Canadian chip leader, Brett Apter is in no mans land in 4th and then we have four short stacks all with 18BB or less.
The only British player to cash was Chris Brammer, 24th for $2520, the same payout as the only former Main Event winner to cash, Ryan Reiss.
In contrast with some of the events above, this one has raced through to a FT, so this will finish within 3 days.
Event 82 - $1500 NLH Double Stack, Day 1 of 2, 2589 entries
This should end today but with spare capacity on the featured tables after Event 81 finishes early and a day off in the main, an extra day wouldn't be too much of a surprise.
357 are left, headed by two former bracelet winners, Mike Leah & Will Givens, with Ray Vohra in third.
Also through - Greg Raymer, Ismael Bojang, Valentin Vornicu, Gordon Vayo, Phil Hellmuth & Joseph Cheong.
The British challenge is headed by Daniel Wendorf in 11th, accompanied by two Roberts Sherwood & Tinnion, Jason McConnon, Niall Murray and another Robert this time Robert Glaspool along with a few others.
(Edited to remove repeated posting)
Event 83 - $100K NLH High Roller, Day 1 of 3, 95 entries so far
Just over half of the 95 remain, and the player who led the $50K high roller at one point is back at it again, Brandon Adams who finished 4th in that previous event and also won the online High Roller has nearly 3m chips ahead of Byron Kaverman in 2nd and James Chen in 3rd.
As you would expect plenty of familiar high roller names, Ali Imsirovic, Bryn Kenney, Danny Tang, Isaac Haxton, etc.
It wouldn't probably too much of a surprise to see some of the UK names involved either, Stephen Chidwick and Talal Shakerchi while Michael Zhang Sam Grafton are perhaps less often seen at this sort of buyin level.
We've also got 2 nationals of other countries but resident in the UK left, Orpen Kisacikoglu and Sergi Reixach.
To start today
Event 84 - $1500 The Closer NLH, 2 Day Event, 3 starting flights Fri/Sat/Sun
Event 85 - $3K PLO 6-max, 4 Day Event
Then there will be just 4 more events to start
Nicholas Marchington marches (sorry) on and on. He has just won a huge hand to eliminate Luke Graham in 29th and added more than 10 million more chips to his total, he is now up to about 64million with his nearest challenger Timothy Su just below 40million. However, we've lost one of our contenders:
Bustouts
35. Corey Burbick - first few hands, Jonathan Dempsey moved all in from UTG with AQ, called by Burbick from the button with Jacks and a Queen on the river sealed Burbick's fate.
34. Stephen Parrott - first victim of the day for Marchington. Parrott was short entering the day, picked up AK on the button and shoved, Marchington didn't have to call for much in the big blind with Q10. Two more tens on the flop and a Queen on the turn left Parrott drawing dead. And please note, not one Parrott pun.
33. Thomer Pidun - three bet shoved with A8 against the bigger stack of Milos Skbric but the Serb had pocket jacks. Pidun couldn't improve and was eliminated
32. Daniel Charlton - the man from Macclesfield (wearing a Macclesfield Town shirt) three bet shoved with AQ but unfortunately for him Nicholas Danias had kings. Charlton picked up one Queen on the turn but it was not enough
31. Christopher Ahrens was short and shoved with pocket fives, but Alex Livingston had kings and the board ran out dry
30. Mario Navarro - A6 against Viktor Rau's AJ. Navarro picked up an gutshot draw on the turn but the outs missed and Navarro was gone.
29. Luke Graham - at the hands of Marchington (as noted above). Marchington's pocket Jacks made a full house on the river, the same card that gave Graham a nut flush for his AK of hearts. The money went in pre-flop, but it could have gone in at any time for the same result
All those players collected $261K, as will the next player busted, then the remaining 27 will ladder up to the $324K level.
$261,430
28. Yuri Dzivielevski (BRA)
$324,650
27. Oliver Bithell (GBR)
26. Zachary Kroeper
25. Hiroki Nawa (JPN)
24. Johnathan Dempsey
23. Marcelo Cudos (ARG)
22. NIcholas Danias
21. Prebben Stokkan
20. Warwick Mirzikinian (AUS)
19. Duey Duong
$400,000
18. MIhai Manole (ROU)
17. Enrico Rudelitz (GER)
16. Austin Lewis
$500,000
15. Paul Dhaliwal (CAN)
14. Christopher Barton
$600,000
13. Viktor Rau (AUT)
Nicholas Marchington has suffered a major loss of chips to the point where he is one of the short stacks, he's been all in a couple of times with pocket sixes, one got through without action but was called the other time by Skrbic with AQ but a Jack high board saw him double up.
One of the 12 has been very deep in the ME before, MIchael Niwinski from Canada finished 15th in 2016. The chip leader is Hossein Ensan with Garry Gates and Timothy Su both still having over 100BB and are playing on the same table.
Event 73 - $10K MAIN EVENT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP NLH, Day 7 of 10, 8569 entries
The Final Table is set
Day 7 of the Main Event, sometimes the slowest day in poker, is over and we have our 2019 Final Nine, and there is a British player among the nine. More of that later.
Let's get back to where I had given the details of various exits, and start with
28. Yuri Dzivielevski. The Brazilian pro and recent bracelet winner three bet from the big blind with AK, unfortunately for him, the original raiser, Chris Barton had pocket aces and all the money went in. There was a King on the flop to give Dzivielevski some hope, but that was as good as it got for him and he was gone.
This led to a ladder to $324K and a full three-table redraw. Marchington was chip leader with 56m, Timothy Su had nearly 40m and Duey Duong and Hossein Ersan each had nearly 38m. The other GB player left in, Oliver Bithell was the short stack, but soon got a double up leaving him still in a perilous position, but at least a little wiggle room, but not for long.
27 Oliver Bithell. Went with AQ and was called by Su with pocket sixes. He gained some outs with a flop of 8J9 and a few more with a second eight on the turn but a 5 on the river ended his involvement in the Main Event.
Within a few minutes:
26. Zack Kroeper. Three bet with A9, but Marcelo Cudos understandably snap called with Aces. Koerper picked up a flush draw on the turn but it didn't come and the field was down to 25.
25. Hiroki Nawa. He'd been a short stack for some time, found A9 good enough to go with and was called by Preben Stokkan in the BB with K8 and an eight on the board sealed the Japanese player's fate
After the dinner break, within a couple of hands
24. Johnathan Dempsey. Another three bet shove, this time with A10, called by Dario Sammartino with pocket jacks. A 9-high board saw Dempsey hand in his microphone and pick up a payout slip.
23. Marcelo Cudos. Unlike the other bustout players above, when the money went in he was ahead with pocket jacks against Ensan's AQ, but a Q on the board saw the lead change hands and the last South American player was out.
22. Nicholas Danias. He shoved twice in quick succession without getting any callers, but the third time he got two. Danias had AK, Alex Livingston had A10 of clubs while the biggest of the three stacks, Austin Lewis had pocket 10s. All three players were interested in the 8JQ flop with two clubs, the turn was a blank but the King of Hearts on the river gave Livingston Broadway, a near triple-up and sent Danias to the rail and put a severe dent in Lewis' stack.
Michael Niwinski needed a double up and got it with AK against Barton's AJ to give himself a bigger stack just before blinds went up to 250K/500K.
Robert Heidorn and Mihai Manole played several hands against each other before the German resident in London doubled up through Manole and left the Romanian short.
21. Preben Stokkan. The former chip leader had 22BB and after a raise from Zhen Cai, shoved with AK. Cai had pocket tens and picked up a set on the flop to leave Stokkan drawing almost dead, and then actually dead a few seconds later.
On the main feature table, Ensan had won several hands and became the first player over 100m after winning a huge hand against Marchington, the British player trying a 25m chip bet bluff which Ensan snap-called.
20. Warwick Marzikinian. The Aussie had been very busy but was down to about 15BB when he went with pocket twos, Marchington calling him with AK. An all even flop of 6 8 10 saw Marzikinian stay ahead, but an ace on the turn saw the Brit take the lead in the hand and there was no two on the river to save Marzikinian, Marchington getting back some of the chips he'd lost four hands ago.
Kevin Maahs had been comparitively quiet and his stack dribbled down a bit, but found a double-up against Niwinski with the classic race situation of AK against QQ, in true Barry Greenstein style spiking an ace on the river.
19. Duey Duong. Duong was gone, gone, gone in a rare all-in that went all the way to the river for the chips to go in. The board was 3J2-7-8 when Su shoved for 37m chips, Duong called with an overpair, but Su had hit a set of twos and Duong's ME was over.
Another ladder to $400K, but in a hand on the other at the same time
18. Mihai Manole. Went all in with AJ, called by Garry Gates who had Manole covered (had to get that one in once) but the shortie dominated Gates with AJ vs A10. Not for long as Gates hit a 10 on the flop and despite Manole picking up Broadway outs with a Q on the flop, he had to walk away $400K the richer.
Another re-draw at two tables, the top stacks being Ensan 120m, Su 105m, and Milos Skrbic 47m. Marchington was in 4th spot at this point.
With just 4 hands of the new tables being set
17. Enrico Rudelitz. The second shortest stack at the time found Pocket Kings and of course he only had one option, called by Sammartino with AQ. A 2-3-4 flop gave the Italian outs to the wheel, but he didn't need them as an ace came on the flop.
On the other table maybe a minute later
16. Austin Lewis. If Rudelits had been the second shortest stack at the redraw, Lewis was the shortest, and three-bet shoved with K10. Heidorn took his time but eventually called with A8, and in a cruel manner Lewis made a pair on the flop (KQ4), and a second pair on the flop (10) but Heidorn got his runner-runner Broadway with a Jack on the river.
Pay jump to a cool half a million dollars.
Again, in very quick succession
15. Paul Dhaliwal. AK against Sammartino's pocket 9s and a 9 on the flop, plus two sevens on the turn and river gave the Italian the Full House and eliminate Dhaliwal to leave two Canadians (Livingston & Niwinski) left.
Things then slowed down a little, with both Ensan and Skrbic chipping up by winning smallish pots.
14. Chris Barton. He'd been getting short for some time, but when you've got AK suited and there is a raise in front of you, things don't get much better for a short sack. The problem was that the raiser, Skrbic had pocket tens and called the shove and faded all five cards to knock out Barton.
Another ladder, the next two players to go would take $600K
Garry Gates is a well known figure in Vegas poker circles and he certainly had the biggest and loudest rail, and they were whooping and hollering when he doubled up through the chip leader with pocket kings against Ensan's AK
Marchington had been active throughout, and got a four-bet shove through against Cai, but lost all of his gains moments later when a flop bet from Skrbic forced him to fold.
Kevin Maahs was all-in again, and found another double up with Pocket Aces which were called by Marchington with AQ just after the blinds had gone up to 300K/600K, denting the Essex man's stack to about 25BB, and lost another 5m chips to Cai when he had to fold to a river bet.
13. Viktor Rau. Another three bet shove, from the Small Blind with Pocket Queens but Henry Lu's chips were in almost before Rau's forward motion had finished as he had Kings. A third King on the board ended the hand as a contest, and we were down to 12.
This is when the action slowed down, each table very aware of what was happening on the other table. Players were very cautious, but there were no really obvious stalling going on, and an onscreen graphic showed that at one point, each of the final two tables had played 61 hands so neither group of six players were gaining an advantage. Niwkinski almost-shoved one time but kept behind one chip in case anything serious was happening simultaneously on the other table, and then the next he shoved he didn't keep one behind, a tactic immediately noticed by Gates.
The first player to be at risk was Marchington. Most of the time it seemed to he him and Skrbic in hands together and it was here again, with the Brit down to 10m chips he shoved with sixes and was called by A10 but luckily for the Brit the board was kind and he doubled up. Soon after, Livingston also doubled through Skrbic (KQ held up against K4)
Chip leaders at a break - Ensan 118m, Su 76m, Gates 69m. Marchington was 9th with 18.5m.
Niwinski doubled up for what seemed to be the millionth time with pocket nines to put a small dent in Ensan's stack, and then we saw a sequence of hands with very few flops, let alone turns and rivers. Henry Lu shoved on Ensan a couple of times but got no action.
12. Michael Niwinski. Finally his luck ran out in a hand with Henry Lu. Niwinski went all-in with AK, Lu who had not much more than Niwinski's stack and would have been crippled with a loss, called with sevens. Lu was breathing much easier when the board came down 10-10-7 to give him a full house and there was no dramatic conclusion with Niwinski being busto.
The final pre-final money jump saw players in 10th and 11th claim $800K, but with 11 players left we had a little controversy.
Sammartino raised to 1.7 from UTG+1, Marchington shoved from the SB for 22m and Sammartino called. The cards were turned over with Marchington having the advantage of Queens over tens. The flop was dealt (8-high rainbow) but then play stopped, Sammartino realised that the amount to call he'd been told by the dealer was incorrect, instead of calling for something like 20BB, he'd called a 30BB bet and it took two tournament directors to determine that the call stood, with the board running out a harmless 6 & Jack. This took 10 minutes or so while the other table continued play and some people thought that due to the length of stoppage their table should have been paused too.
Anyway, after all this had worked itself out, the very next hand (on the table that had continued to play)
11. Henry Lu. A Lu bet, and a Gates three-bet pre, a Gates bet and a call on the flop, a Gates check followed by a Lu bet on the turn. Gates spent a lot of time thinking what to do before raising Lu all-in, and Lu himself then went into the tank for several minutes before calling. Gates had Lu dominated from the start with AJ against KJ, while the Jack on the flop gave each of them a pair. Lu needed one of the three remaining kings on the river, but it was the 8 of hearts and Gates had won by far the biggest pot of the ME so far of over 80m chips.
This brought the field down to the unofficial FT of 10, all rammed in together on the feature table. Leaders Ensan 169m, Gates 102m then a huge cap back to Cai 44m and Marchington 42m.
It took just four hands to being some action, it came down to blind against Blind and Skrbic shoved on Livingston, the Canadian had KQ and decided he was probably in front and so it proved, Skrbic had tried to pick up the blinds and antes with Q3 but failed and was lost about half his stack in the process. A run of raise and take it down pots followed, before in hand 129, we had the last hand of the evening.
10. Robert Heidorn. He hadn't featured in many big pots and had dwindled to the short stack and decided to go with KQ suited for his last 9m. Livingston iso-shoved for 22m from the button and turned over two red eights with Heidorn showing KQ. The flop was a Canadian-pleasing 987 but there was a sweat after a Jack on the turn gave Heidorn a gut shot, but the river was a 5 and the FT was set.
The 9 remaining players have a rest day/media day Saturday and will return on Sunday with the blinds at 500K/1m (and a Big Blind ante of 500K) so even I can work out how many BB each player has in their stack.
Seat draw is
1. Hossein Ensan (GER) 177m
2. Nicholas Marchington (GBR) 20m
3. Dario Sammartino (ITA) 33m
4. Kevin Maahs (USA) 43m
5. Timothy Su (USA) 20m
6. Zhen Cai (USA) 61m
7. Garry Gates (USA) 99m
8. Milos Skrbic (SRB) 23m
9. Alex Livingston (CAN) 38m
I'll post tomorrow giving a little more about the players, but if Marchington wins, he will become the youngest ever winner of the Main Event, a few months younger than Joe Cada was when he won. (I believe Cada would have been younger had the tournament played to it's conclusion immediately not waited for the November Nine concept).
Event 75 - $1111 Little One for One Drop, Day 5 of 4, 6248 entries
It was almost a third Brazilian bracelet of the summer, but Fernando Karem came up just short as the win went to James Anderson
A recent returnee to the game after a few years away, Anderson has three six-figure wins on his Hendon Mob page, but the $690K he picked up here now becomes his career high.
Third place went to Marco Guibert from Argentina making it a very succesful "Droplet" for South America.
Event 78 - $1500 PLO Bounty, Day 4 of 3, 1140 entries
It's a rare bracelet for Denmark and for Maximilian Klostermeier who has only been a pro for a year and much prefers NLH to PLO.
David Callaghan achieved the best result of the summer for an Irish player when he came second for $109K (plus bounties) while Bryce Yockey made his 4th top ten finish of the series ended up in third spot.
Event 79 - $3K NLH, Day 4 of 4, 671 entries
Allez France! In the first 30 events of the 2019 we had no French winners, now Ivan Deyra has followed up wins by Thomas Cazayous and Jeremy Saderne by taking down Event 79.
He won the event in style, holding a full house when David Gonzales tried to bluff him and made perhaps the easiest call of his career to win his first bracelet and $380K, by far the biggest cash of his life.
Patrick Leonard had his highest WSOP finish to date when he went out in 4th with a very tidy pink slip for $114K.
Event 80 - $1500 Mixed NLH/PLO, Day 3 of 3, 1250 entries
As I posited yesteday, this has overrun to a 4th day with 7 players left. The leader is Ayaz Mahmood, with Lucas Greenwood and Jeremy Kotter in second and third but the British interest lies in the player in 5th spot, Peter Linton.
Linton is getting his 4th cash of the series (including a $38K cash for a decent run in the ME), and like Anderson (see Event 75) took a long break from the game with no cashes recorded between May 2013 (when he had his highest cash, $487K from the ill-fated International Stadiums Poker Tour in London) and June 2017.
Iaron Lightbourne was one of the early Day 2 casualties, finishing 34th for $6506.
Event 81 - $1500 Bracelet Winners Only NLH, Day 3 of 4, 185 entries
The unique event went to Shankhar Pillai who qualified for this by winning a $3K NLH event twelve years ago.
He beat Michael Gagliano (2016 $2500 NLH winner) heads-up with Tommy Nguyen (2018 $1500 Monster Stack) in third.
Event 82 - $1500 NLH Double Stack, Day 2 of 2, 2589 entries
Just call me psychic, or perhaps the WSOP should ask me when determining how many days events will take?
Eight players remain going into extra time, the chip lead held by the wonderfully named Freek Scholten of the Netherlands from Darren Rabinowitz and two-time bracelet winner Barry Schulman.
The only other bracelet holder left among the final 9 is a winner in a Stud event, Tom Koral..
Pablo Campo was the last Brit standing, being the last player eliminated on Day 2 for $43K, while Gary Solomons, Yiannis Laperis and Daniel Wendorf all made the Top 50.
Event 83 - $100K NLH High Roller, Day 2 of 3, 99 entries
Six players will fight it out for the High Roller led by Keith Tilston ahead of Day 1 leader Brandon Adams and Nick Schulman in third. Schulman was a regular in the ESPN/Poker Go live coverage earlier in the series but has been removed from the team, with different explanations for his disappearance depending on who you believe.
Daniel Negreanu has made another FT in 6th, with the two players in 4th and 5th also well known names Dominik Nitsche and Igor Kurganov.
With only 15 cashing, Sam Grafton made 13th spot for $171K and Sergi Reixach, a Spanish player who lives in Bournemouth getting $353K for 7th position.
Event 84 - $1500 The Closer NLH, Day 1A, 463 entries so far
The Day 1A chip leader is Event 26 champion Roman Korenev, with Griffen Abel the only other player to bag a million chips at the end of the first of three Day 1s.
Another recent bracelet winner, Ari Engel lies third, with just 30 players moving on and no British names amongst them.
Event 85 - $3K PLO 6-max, Day 1 of 4, 835 entries
After the British wipeout in Event 84 (at least the first flight), it's nice to say there is a British leader of Day 1 of Event 85.
Paresh Doshi, for it is him, has 359K chips bagged, ahead of Kenneth Lucas' 291K and Hao Chen's 287K.
Doshi isn't alone as Iaron Lightbourne, Max Silver, John Kabbaj, Benny Glaser, Fraser MacIntyre, Dimitri Holdeew and Matthew Smith are also through to Day 2.
Also still involved are Anton Morgenstern, David Williams, Leif Force, Scott Bohlman, Loren Klein, Bruno Fittousi, Robert Mizrachi, recent bracelet winner Juha Helppi and many more, in fact 173 in total will come back for more PLO.
To start today
Event 86 - $10K NLH 6-max, 4 Day Event
Plus Day 1B of The Closer
A day off, which I'm sure all 9 will be grateful for.
Event 80 - $1500 Mixed NLH/PLO, Day 4 of 3, 1250 entries
So, so close to another British bracelet as Peter Linton's run finished in a heads-up defeat to Sweden's Jerry Odeen
After third placed player Adam Demersseman was knocked out, Odeen had slightly less than a 2:1 lead, but the next eight hands would be in NLH, the game in which he probably had the advantage with Linton the better player in PLO.
Unfortunately for Linton, he never got to see another hand of the four card game, folding the first hand to a flop bet and three-bet shoving the second with 10-9 suited and was snap called by Odeen with the two red jacks.
An interesting flop of 2-8-J saw Odeen make a set, but gave Linton a gut shot, but the dealer turned over a 10 and a 3 with the final two cards.
Event 82 - $1500 NLH Double Stack, Day 2 of 2, 2589 entries
This one also had a day off, and will return on Sunday for the extra Day 3.
Event 83 - $100K NLH High Roller, Day 3 of 3, 99 entries
Daniel Negreanu's wait for a seventh bracelet will have to wait for a little while longer as he was the runner-up for a 10th time in a WSOP event, matching the record for seconds held by Phil Hellmuth.
He came from the short stack entering Day 3, and doubled up on five occasions, at least once against all the other players on the FT with the exception being the winner Keith Tilston
Tilston had also FT'd the $50K High Roller, and started Day 3 as the chip leader, but the only player without a bracelet, a hole in his CV he has now filled.
He took $2.792m for first, Negreanu $1.725 for second and Nick Schulman $1.187m for third.
Event 84 - $1500 The Closer NLH, Day 1B
For the second day running, there is a complete absence of British players from the qualifiers for Day 2 of The Closer.
45 from elsewhere in the world did make it through, with Shaun Deeb (still with one eye on retaining the Player of the Year title) holding the chip lead.
Denis Gnidsah lies second and Jeff Gross third.
There are a few well known players trying to grab a bracelet late on in the Series, Mike Leah, Joe Cada and Michael Mizrachi among them.
Event 85 - $3K PLO 6-max, Day 2 of 4, 835 entries
24 left after Day 2 with John Richards, who took the lead midway through the day, the chip leader with a significant margin back to Abraham Faroni and Michael Kuney in second and third.
This is another event in which we won't see a British winner, the last GB player departing in 29th when Iaron Lightbourne was kncoked out (taking $12678). Other cashes went to Max Silver, Matthew Smith, Paresh Doshi, John Kabbaj while Benny Glaser was the bubble boy.
Recent bracelet winner Juha Helppi is still standing, as are Joseph Cheong and Brandon Shack-Harris.
After the British wipeout in Event 84 (at least the first flight), it's nice to say there is a British leader of Day 1 of Event 85.
Event 86 - $10K NLH 6-max, Day 1 of 4, 248 entries so far
The last $10K event of the Vegas portion of the 2019 WSOP saw a high-quality field battle through 10 one-hour levels and at the end of play, 113 players still had chips in hand.
Felix Bleiker holds the chip lead, from John Andress and Yuri Dzivielevski who won Event 51 and had a very deep run in the ME.
Sam Greenwood also ran deep in the Main and is through to Day 2, as did Alex Foxen, and some other names through include Jennifer Tilly, Barry Hutter, Robert Mizrachi and Nick Schulman.
From a British perspective, Paul Fontan leads the challenge in 11th spot, both GB 2019 bracelet winners (Ben Heath and Stephen Chidwick) move on, along with Simon Deadman, Max Silver, Toby Lewis, Damien Le Goff, Niall Farrell and a number of those overseas-resident-in-the-UK players, headed by Sergi Reixach inside the top 10.
Daniel Negreanu hopped into this after losing his heads-up match, what odds another second place here?
To start today
Event 87 - $3K HORSE, 3 Day Event
Event 88 - $500 WSOP.com Online NLH Summer Saver, 1 Day Event I incorrectly stated we had already had the last online event of the series last week.
Plus Day 1C of The Closer and the resumption of the Main Event and Event 82.
There is 1 hour and 31 minutes left of Level 37, with the Blinds at 500K/1million, with a 1million Big Blind Ante. This a) makes working out how many Big Blinds each player has left a piece of cake, and b) means that each orbit will cost each player 2.5million chips.
The Day 8 play will take the field from 9 down to 6, which sounds like it shouldn't take too long, but with the huge payjumps involved and regular commerical breaks it could take some time.
Seat 1 Hossein Ensan Germany 177,000,000
The overwhelming chip leader is Iran-born German pro Hossein Ersan. He moved to Germany aged 25, and has been a recognisable name around European poker circles since 2013. He finished 3rd in an EPT Main Event in 2014 and went two better in Prague in 2015 where he won his biggest prize money to date, €754,510. He also won a WSOP Circuit ring in 2017. He rose through the field on Day 4 which he ended in 14th spot and has continued on a upward spiral for most of the time since.
Seat 2 Nick Marchington United Kingdom 20,100,000
The only Brit at the FT is a 21-year old virtual live rookie, with just the one result recorded on the Hendon Mob database, a 19th place in the $800 8-handed deepstack event for $12K. This though is on a whole different level and for most of the time, he's looked at home. He would be the youngest ever WSOP Main Event champion taking the record from Joe Cada (Cada would have held the record had the FT in his year played out straight away not held over to be the November Nine). He may not have much live experience, but he does have plenty of online history. For the first six days he moved up in the standings every day - 355 to 186 to 179 to 32 to 6 to 1, from where of course he couldn't go any higher, and as others increased their stack he goes to the FT as the short stack after losing a huge pot to Ensan on a bluff.
Seat 3 Dario Sammartino Italy 33,400,000
Sammartino is a highly experienced live professional from Naples with over $8 million in live cashes. He has stepped back a little in the amount he plays recently, and this seems to have done him a power of good as he's making his 3rd FT of the summer, including finishing 3rd in the $10K Horse event for $184K.He also had a good run in the $50K Poker Players Champioship. He has 15 different scores of over $100K, and one seven-figure payday when finishing third in the 2017 $111,111 High Roller for One Drop for $1.6m
Seat 4 Kevin Maahs United States 43,000,000
Perhaps the most anonymous player so far of the final 9, the 27 year old from Illinois is the only one of the final nine who took advantage of the new system where players could enter on Day 2. He has 10 live cashes on his record, 3 of them coming this year totalling $61K, all of them being at events held in the Mid-West. He was at risk late on Day 6 but patiently hang around and got his double up with Pocket Aces to build him a stack that would last him until the FT.
Seat 5 Timothy Su United States 20,200,000
One of the bigger characters of the early days of the Main Event, he was the chip leader on both Day 2 and Day 5. He has the smallest live cash total of the field, just $2467 gathered from three events, one of which was the Colossus (Event 61) where he picked up $927. By day, he's a software engineer whose hobies are playing the oboe, reading and listening to classical music. Not your typical ME final tabler.
Seat 6 Zhen Cai United States 60,600,000
Usually a PLO cash game player, the 35-year old has turned his hands to Live NLH rather well, with cashes in events dating back to 2008 although this his first WSOP cash since 2011. He is very good friends with last year's runner up Tony Miles who has been seen in Cai's rail over the last two days. He holds the third biggest stack entering the FT and was the player responsible for eliminating NFL star Richard Seymour on Day 5.
Seat 7 Garry Gates United States 99,300,000
Gates will undoubtedly have the largest and most vocal rail at the FT. He was the lead reporter for PokerNews, the firm that do most of the live updates from the WSOP that I rely heavily on when researching these posts, he then went on work for PokerStars as a Senior Consultant of Player Affairs for their live events, bringing him into regular content with some of the biggest names in the game, who are right behind him in his run to the FT. He will doubtless have been fully prepared by some of those big names over the last 24 hours. It's his 4th cash in the Main Event, his previous best effort voming in 2011 when he made it to 173rd spot.
Seat 8 Milos Skrbic Serbia 23,400,000
The fourth European at the FT, originally from Serbia but now resident in San Diego, California. Along with Sammartino, he has a million dollar score on his CV, a $1.06m win for finishing 2nd in the 2018 WPT Five Diamond event to Dylan Linde. He also has a WSOP ME FT to his name, the 2018 WSOP Europe Main Event FT where he finished 5th. He also has plenty of experience of high stakes cash games. Upfront, he seems to have been the most confident of the players, telling his friends not to bother getting to Vegas until Tuesday when the final 3 play out for the bracelet.
Seat 9 Alex Livingston Canada 37,800,000
Last but not least, Livingston has some experience of a very deep run in the ME to draw on, as he made Day 7 six years ago before going out in 13th. He had a good start to the ME, finishing inside the top 100 on both day 1 and day 2, but was never really among the upper echelons until the very late stages, in fact he entered Day 7 as the second smallest stack of the 35 players. He was the winner of the final hand of the night when he flopped a set of eights to eliminate Robert Heidorn and confirm the Final Table. The 32 year old has two cashes earlier in the Series and 15 in all dating back to 2011 in numerous variants of the game.
TV coverage starts on BT Sport/ESPN from 3am (on the normal 30-minute delay) and is scheduled to last until 5am, but I'm sure if play hasn't finished they will continue to show the action until play has ended for the day.
The 9th placed player will get $1m, eighth place takes $1.25m and 7th earns you $1.525m
Thanks to PokerNews and the HendonMob database for a lot of the content referenced in this posting.
"Thanks to PokerNews and the HendonMob database for a lot of the content referenced in this posting."
More importantly, thanks to you Barny @FCHD for the immense amount of work you put into these Updates.
With the intention to have just three bustouts on Day 8, things got going pretty quickly when on just the third hand Nick Marchington three-bet shoved with pocket tens, the original raiser Zhen Cai eventually calling the bet with AQ. A ten on the flop virtually sealed the deal and the Brit doubled up.
Hand 6, one of the shorter stacks, Milos Skrbic was faced with a decision for all his chips when Gates bet big ahead of him. From the BB, Skrbic with AJ, understandably thinking he was ahead of Gates' range from the SB but Gates had AQ and the Serbian was out in 9th for a cool million dollars.
Five hands later, Timothy Su shoved from UTG. Zhen Cai asked for a count, thought long and hard before folding but chip leader Hossein Ersan called. He had AJ and Su had pocket threes. Su couldn't have got a much worse flop than J55, there was a blank on the turn and another Jack added insult to injury on the river giving the German a full house. Su was out with a $1.25m payday.
Ensan moved over the 200m chip mark when he got a turn bet through against Kevin Maahs, but lost 11m of them not much later in a hand with Cai which went to showdown with both players having two pair.
After a break, Gates took another chunk of Ensan's chips on a hand where a pair of eights was enough to beat a pair of twos.
Hand 32, Ensan raised from the cutoff, Marchington three-bet all in for his last 14BB and Ensan snap called with two black kings, Marchington having A7. After a flop of J86, he turned some straight outs with a 6 but there was no help on the river and the last British player was out for $1.525m.
The WSOP then made the decision that as we'd had only about 90 minutes of poker, they'd carry on until another player was eliminated.
Alex Livingston won three smallish pots in a row to move into third spot, but still a long way behind the top two.
Hand 40, on a three-bet pre-flop hand, a board of 652 looked pretty uninviting but Cai shoved and Maahs folded.
On the very next hand, Cai lost those chips and more when Gates made a full house, slow playing it hoping Cai would commit himself but he lost somewhere near the minimum. Gates was now becoming a serious threat to Ensan's chip lead.
Cai continued to put chips in pre-flop but getting very little out of hands, and drifted down to become one of the bottom two with Dario Sammartino who was not very active at all.
Cai eventually picked up AK, and with a raise in front from Ensan and a call from Maahs, shoved. Ensan folded but Maahs with pocket nines took the chance and called. The board ran out Queen high with no flush possibilities, Cai was out ($1.85m) and play ended for the day with just 5 players in the running for the $10m first prize and the title of World Champion.
So we now have a very polarised table, with Ensan and Gates having massive stacks and the other three players only having 25% of the chips in play between them.
Both the two big stacks won 11 of the 56 hands today, Ensan adding about 31m to his stack but Gates added over 72m to his stack.
Seat 1 Ensan 207m
Seat 2 Sammartino 23m
Seat 3 Maahs 66m
Seat 4 Gates 171m
Seat 5 Livingston 46m
Blinds are 600K/1.2m with a 1.2m ante, they've about 35 minutes left before the price of poker will rise yet again.
I presume they'll stick with the original plan of having three players left at the end of tonight, but if we see two of the short stacks bust within the first half hour, who knows?
Event 82 - $1500 NLH Double Stack, Day 3 of 2, 2589 entries
Tom Koral has been around the poker scene since 2005, and has recorded cashes (and decent ones at that) in a number of variants. But it was in good ol' NLH that he won his second bracelet and his biggest monetary prize ever ($530K) in Event 82.
He held a 3:2 leads heads up against the Netherlands' Freek Scholten at the start of heads-up and one massive point where basically Koral had ace-high (although technically the board was paired) and Scholten had King high saw him establish a lead that only got bigger as the match went on. Koral finished it in style with pocket aces.
Barry Shulman's bid for a third bracelet ended in third spot.
Event 84 - $1500 The Closer NLH, Day 1C, 2800 entries in total
Hallelujah! At the third time of asking we finally got some British players through to Day 2, and in style two with Waikat Lee and Ian Simpson both inside the top ten.
Jack Salter, Usman Siddique and Ryan O'Sullivan make it 5 GB names through, with 196 in total from the three day 1s.
Day 1C was "won" by Tam Nguyen ahead of Steve Yea and Anton Wigg with Phil Hellmuth one of the other qualifiers along with Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier, KC Tran, Dylan Linde and Tom Franklin
This should finish today.
Event 85 - $3K PLO 6-max, Day 3 of 4, 835 entries
Six left for the last PLO bracelet, with two big stacks (Millard Hale and Day 2 leader John Richards), two medium stacks (Alan Sternberg and Evengelos Kokkalis) and two less than 12BB stacks (Ka Kwan Lu and event 34 winner Joseph Cheong).
Event 86 - $10K NLH 6-max, Day 2 of 4, 272 entries
This has raced through to just 16 players with potentially two days to go, with the chip lead held by Anuj Agarwal. He has just over 2m chips with Markus Gonsalves and Jeffrey Trudeau either side of 1.7m in second and third.
Ben Heath is one of two British players left (the other being Simon Deadman) and one of two former bracelet winners left (the other being short stacked Gal Yifrach)
The plan is to play down to 6, but as we've found out in the Main Event today, that could well change.
Event 87 - $3K HORSE, Day 1 of 3, 301 entries
127 of the 301 players survive Day 1 with defending champion Brian Hastings one of a large number of bracelet holders making it through.
They're all chasing the Day 1 leader Harold Klein, second placed Justin Liberto and third placed Yueqi Zhu.
Adam Owen, Patrick Leonard, Benny Glaser and Paul Sokoloff make up a strong British challenge, but just some of the names left in will give you an idea of the strength of the field - John Monnette, Chris Ferguson, Daniel Negreanu, Greg Mueller, Paul Volpe, Ismael Bojang, Jeff Lisandro, and Mike Matusow.
Event 88 - $500 WSOP.com Online NLH Summer Saver, 1 Day Event, 1859 entries
The last online bracelet of the summer will live on the wrist of Taylor Paur, who claimed his second overall bracelet and a prize of nearly $150K.
He finished ahead of Swiss player Francois Evard with Satfish Surapeneni coming third.
To start today
15/07/19 Event 89 - $5K NLH, 2 Day Event