Event #57: $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em
Takahiro Nakai and Mel Wiener are taking the $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em event into an unscheduled fourth day as they fight it out for the bracelet and the $399,039 first prize.
The day might not last too long. The last hand of the night saw Wiener crippled as his A-8 was dominated by Nakai’s A-Q all-in pre-flop. The hand left him with just 1,315,000 chips against Nakai’s 11,170,000.
Britain’s Paul Vas Nunes finished in third place to take his total WSOP winnings over the half million dollar mark. Glenn Lafaye and Jonas Lauck went to the rail in 4th and 5th place respectively.
2,497 players started the event giving a prize pool of $2,247,300. The top four finishers all won over $100,000, with Lauck just missing out on a six-figure payday with his prize of $92,453.
Event #59: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em
2006 WSOP main Event winner Jamie Gold is sat in second place on the leaderboard for event #59, with just 37 players left standing from an initial field of 309.
Ahead of him is Guiliano Bendinelli, who is looking to give Italy another bracelet victory and his first WSOP win.
Behind them are several players who could upset their ambitions. Ari “BodogAri” Engel is in sixth place with 673,000 chips, and bracelet winner from the 2008 WSOP, Michael Banducci, has 471,000 chips.
First place prize money is over half a million dollars, with the winner taking home $531,037 as well as the coveted gold bracelet. Such sums are nothing new to Jamie Gold—he won $12 million in 2006, the largest first prize ever paid out in a poker tournament until the Big One for ONE DROP event was held during WSOP 2012.
Event #60: $25,000 High Roller Pot-Limit Omaha
This year’s WSOP leaderboards have rarely been seen without the name of Anthony Zinno somewhere near the top, but for all of his efforts he has never quite managed to end up the winner and owner of a WSOP bracelet.
In the $25,000 High Roller PLO event, he might have his best chance yet. He is on top of the leaderboard with a stack of 2,460,000, and only 12 players remain in the event.
He is marginally ahead of Juha Helppi but has a significant chip lead over the rest of the field. Unfortunately some of the remaining layers have plenty of experience at this level, and even with short stacks they won’t make it easy for Zinno to achieve his ambition.
Alexander Kostritsyn is in third place with over 1.8 million chips. He is also looking for his first bracelet having made four previous WSOP top ten finishes.
Shaun Deeb picked up his first bracelet earlier in the series, winning the $10,000 PLO Championship event. A second bracelet in the same series would put him closer to the top of the WSOP Player of the Year race. He is currently in 5th place for that race.
175 players entered the event and the top prize is seven figure $1,122,196.
Event #61A: $1,111 The Little One for One Drop
Another big field turned out for the charitable Little One for ONE DROP, with 4,555 players entering via the two starting flights.
First place prize money will be $645,969, but 1,047 players remain in the evnt for Day 2, so there is a long way to go before the winner emerges.
The chip leader as the day begins is Jason Manger who cashed in this year’s Colossus event, and he is followed by a Jamaican player, Gautam Lillaney.
Two time bracelet winner David Pham is not far behind in 14th place, with Michael Mizrachi in 21st. Mizrachi’s brother Robert has caught up to him in bracelets this year, both having won three in total. Michael may already be thinking about reestablishing the differential and reasserting his bragging rights.
