LIVE EVENTS

Day 3 of the $3,000 + $300 WPT Main Event here at Playground Poker Club has mercifully come to a close.

After almost fourteen hours of gruelling play, the dust finally settled and we closed out the evening with ten total players still alive and kicking. Each of them will be surely be laser-targeted on the huge half-million-dollar payout going to the winner tomorrow.

In the last few hands, we lost our 11th place finisher, Mr. Louis Salter. He left earlier than he would have liked to, but still comes away with solid $43,000 for his trouble. Well done! As for the finalists, in the end it was Joseph Cheong that took the chip lead away from Adedapo Ajayi, bagging himself 9, 185,000, just under a million more than Adedapo. All of our final ten players and their chip stacks are listed below.

As for now, it’s time to get to bed. All the finalists will need to be rested in order to make the final push, and play will begin in just about ten hours. The group will be getting started at noon and will play down to six, at which point that final group will gather (and play) at the WPT Featured Table.

The Featured Table is equipped with multiple cameras and will be manned by an expert WPT crew. And as it was last year, the final table will be broadcasted on the WPT’s Youtube channel with only a 30-minute delay, so be sure to tune in if you want to watch the action but can’t make it down to Playground to see it in person.

Once again, congratulations to everyone on an excellent day of poker, and good luck tomorrow!

At this point, we’re almost done for the evening. Although the aim was to play down to the nine players tonight, because the pace of play stretched a little longer than anticipated, players will instead play to the end of the current level (29). They will make their final push to the final table tomorrow – that is unless two players are knocked out in the next 25 minutes (the amount of time remaining in this final level.

It appears that Adedapo Ajayi is still our chip leader, with over 6,000,000 in chips in front of him. A few others have healthy chip stacks as well, however. All five of the chip leaders are pictured below, and below the pictures is a list of the last several players to be eliminated, along with their prizes.

16th place: Rodney Ramalho – $23,000

15th place: James Hundt – $28,000

14th place: Catalin Pop – $28,000

13th place: Marc McLaughlin – $35,000

12th place: Duff Charette – $35,000

Congratulations to all those players for an excellent run in this WPT Main Event. Well done!

With 16 players left battling out for a spot at the final table, we have reached the second redraw of the evening. The players and their respective seat assignments are listed below.

After almost 12 hours of play, we’ve moved down to 16 players from an original group of 159 at the start of the day. Since the players are on break, we took the opportunity to do a quick count of the chip leaders. Up top is the same man as the last time, Adedapo Ajayi.

Holding 7,600,000 chips, he’s firmly in the lead, although there are three other significant stacks to watch, those belonging to Geoffrey Hum (5.73M), Joseph Cheong (5.27M) and Kristen Bicknell (4.58M). Kristen is one of two women left in the hunt, the other being Kelly Minkin.

The last four players to be eliminated all earned themselves to same prize, $23,000. Congratulations go out each of them for their excellent finish. Well done! Their names are:

20th place: Curt Kohlberg

19th place: Samuel Gagnon

18th place: Roger Lamia

17th place: Lonnie Hallett

Stephen Deutsch is the latest player to take his leave from the WPT Main Event’s Day 3 action. His last hand occurred when he found himself up against Kristen Bicknell, betting it all on pocket fours.

Stephen was short-stacked and Kristen had him covered by a mile, so she called. Her king-ten paired up immediately, as the board came down . Stephen couldn’t sail his way to victory, and earns $19,000 for his 22nd place finish, the third player to earn that level of payout.

The other two players to earn $19,000, finishing in 23rd and 24th place respectively, were Donald Maloney and  James Romero. Congratulations to all three for such a deep run in the WPT Main Event.

Note: A fourth player earned himself $19,000 while this post was being written, Jonathan Roy. He finished in 21st place. Places 16 through 20 will all earn a prize of $23,000. 

Play continues…

Now that we are down to 24 players, there has been a full redraw. They players and their respective tables and positions are below.

It was a great run, especially considering the spot he was in just a couple of hours ago. Unfortunately for local and Playground regular Carlo Nini, his WPT Main Event run is over. Finishing in 27th, he earns himself $16,000 – not a bad payday!

He went deep, outlasting all but 26 other players, and also came back from the brink earlier tonight. By wagering his last 5,000 chip coin when there were still 51 players left, he somehow won several hands in a row and increased his chip stack all the way up to the mid-300’s. Turning his potential 51st place finish of $10,250 into $16,00, Carlo showed determination and patience and earned every extra dollar he made over the course of the last two levels.

That aside, it wasn’t meant to be. Carlo’s final hand saw him shove with a pair of sixes, losing to Kristen Bicknell’s suited ace-ten that turned into a flush on the river. Too bad, but still a well-played tournament. We’ll see you soon Carlo, thanks for playing.

With only 32 players remaining at their seats, the pressure is starting to mount. Only nine will bag their chips and move on to tomorrow’s WPT Main Event final table, so it’s time to buckle down. Below are some photos of those still vying for the $500,000 first prize. Good luck to all of our competitors!

Players have enjoyed their WPT Main Event buffet here at Playground, and now they’ve made their way back to their seats after the 45-minute dinner break. As expected, the gigantic hand between Mike Leah and (now eliminated) Jack Salter put him near the front of the pack.

Incredibly, however, he is not the chip leader. That honor goes to Florida Gators superfan Adedapo Ajayi, who has been steadily accumulating chips while watching his favorite team on the television above his table. Below is a complete list of our remaining players and their respective chip counts.

Any of these players could end up at the final table, so it was important to list them all, even (and especially) Carlo Nini, whose bottom of the barrel chip stack could still prove quite dangerous as we move towards the night’s climax. He has clawed his way back from near-extinction before, and may have it in him to do it again.

Mike Leah is a great player, having won almost $8,000,000 over the course of his poker career. If you have him at your table, watch out – he might just take your stack. That lesson was meted out to Jack Salter just now, who was our chip leader recently. Unfortunately for Jack, he is the chip leader no more.

Although we missed the early part of the hand, when we arrived at the table Mike and Jack were both all in for about 1,750,000 million chips each. Mike’s pocket tens ended up taking down Jack’s ace-queen, with Mike now the proprietor of over 3,500,000 chips, and the likely new chip leader. With this absolutely massive pot, which crippled Jack, Mike is now in very comfortable position to go deep.

He’s not the type to make mistakes, so we wouldn’t be surprised if he goes the distance today and ends up bagging a spot at the final table. Play continues…

Carlo Nini was down to his last 5,000 chip coin when we walked by his table, so we decided to spend a few moments to watch the end of his tournament. With 51 players left alive, he was due to take home $10,250 for his efforts – a nice score to be sure, although probably not what he wanted, given the massive $500,000 prize waiting for the eventual winner.

But we didn’t see Carlo bust out that hand. Or the next one. Or the next one.

In fact, as Carlo plunked down one of his several remaining time cards to extend his time, hoping that someone on one of the other tables would bust before him and help him come away with a slightly better payout, nobody expected he would last more than a few hands at the most. After all, the chip average was up near 1,000,000 chips. How could he possibly survive?

But survive he did. Carlo won the hand he played against Christine Do, and did it in style.

He called her all-in blind, and when she flipped over a pocket pair of nines, he didn’t expect much. But he flipped over his first card, which was a 10, which was not a bad start. The real surprise came when he flipped over his second card, which was another 10! His surprise pocket pair held, and he moved up from 20,000 to 55,000.

Next he shoved from the button with an , winning against his opponent’s and moving up from 55,000 up to 140,000, as the blinds and ante equal 40,000 per hand at this point. Carlo shoved from the cut-off on the next hand and found no callers, which meant he collected the blinds once again, moving up to 190,000.

Although he skipped the next hand, the hand after that Carlo shoved again. Finding no callers, he collected the blinds once more and moved up to 230,000. This time he showed the table a pocket pair of eights.

Every so often Carlo would steal a glance at the tournament clock, and every time it still showed that there were 51 players remaining. But at least he was safer than he was five hands ago! In just a matter of minutes, Carlo was able to multiply his chip stack by ten, and is still seated at this very moment.

In fact, a quick glance at the tournament clock now (approximately 20 minutes later) tells us that there are only 43 players remaining, with the next player ousted due to collect $11,725. Carlo is a strong player, and so anything is possible. Either way, even if he busts in the next hand, his efforts, luck and skill have earned him $1,500 more than he would have had he lost that fateful hand against Christine.

How high will he finish? Only time will tell!

Because the average chip stack is 778,245 chips, we were on the lookout for stacks at or above 1,500,000 to include in our list of chip leaders. Only six players can claim that accomplishment at this stage of the game, the richest of whom is Jack Salter.

With an impressive 2,270,000 chips, Jack is now the chip leader of this group of 57 players still vying for the main prize in the WPT Main Event. Today’s plan is to play down to a final nine, and based on the pace of play so far, we will almost certainly reach it.

Players have now returned from their break and will continue their journey to the final table. Keep it up!