As predicted, the rail was humming today with all the eliminations as the starting field of 1,864 players was cut down to 852. 693 of the players remaining will make the money as the action picks up again on Friday, but the money bubble comes at a high price– the added pressure often causes players to choke and play a sloppier game than they have before, as the WSOP bracelet now feels so close that the players can almost taste it.
Leading the pack at the end of Day 3 are Patrick Poirier (don’t worry– no one else has heard of him either) with 1,328,000, Darryl Jace, with 1,282,500, Chris Kwon (944,500), David Barter (917,500), Scott Smith (896,500), and Sebastian Ruthenberg, who is sitting at 889,000 and looking for a second WSOP bracelet. Day 2a leader Aleksandr Mozhnyakov sits in tenth place with 813,000.
Former champions Phil Hellmuth and Robert Varkonyi, the 1989 and 2001 Main Event winners, respectively, are still in the running, although both are a bit short-stacked; Hellmuth is holding on to 71,000 chips while Varkonyi has 168,000. Both players are considerably behind the players leading in chips, the top two of whom have over a million chips. Also still in the game are Isabelle Mercier (79,000), Ted Forrest (73,500), Rafe Furst (69,500), Lee Childs (67,000), Humberto Brenes (65,000), and Randal “RandALLin” Flowers (43,000).
Plenty of other familiar faces didn’t even make it far enough to end the day below average: tv stars Jason Alexander and Brad Garrett both hit the rail today, along with former Main Event champions Tom McEvoy, Huck Seed, and Joe Cada. Norwegian Wunderkind Annette Obrestad, who garnered a lot of attention years ago when she won a tournament without looking at her cards (save for once, on an all-in), tweeted that the bad cards she was being dealt were responsible for her small stack going into Day 3. Obrestad was eliminated shortly after the dinner break today. Jason Mercier, Greg Mueller, Matt Matros, Dan Shak, Noah Boeken, Galen Hall, Justin Bonomo, Carlos Mortensen, Sam Stein, Patrik Antonius, Matt Savage, and Ryan D’Angelo all hit the rail today, clearing out some significant talent in one day of play.
One of the most notable moments of Day 3 came when Las Vegas pro Shaun Deeb began his last hand of the 2011 World Series of Poker. Deeb was sitting on pocket Aces and was playing with two other players– one of them German Max Heinzelmann, with whom Deeb had played extensively online. He read the German and placed a five bet to bait his opponent into a six bet (the original raiser folded after four). Deeb raised again, and Heinzelmann went all in. Deeb called. The German was holding A6. The flop came down 10-6-K, and the turn brought the Q, making Deebs two pair look good. The river brought another 6, though, and Heinzelmann’s trip 6s took the pot. As though Deeb’s day wasn’t bad enough after losing a 430k pot on a bad beat, he returned to his hotel and found his laptop stolen. Some days you win, and, as Shaun Deeb has shown us, some days you lose… a lot.