2012 WSOP Day 3
July 13,2012 : WORLD SERIES OF POKER DAY 3
Bust-outs read like a list of who's who in international poker
Timothy Louis (39), a dealer from New Orleans who was involved in the Big One for One Drop epic, was honoured as Dealer of the Year when Day 3 of the 2012 World Series of Poker main event started Thursday in Las Vegas when a field of 1,698 players – survivors of the first five days of main event action – took their seats as a combined field for the first time.
Leading the field and getting plenty of attention was attractive Gaelle Baumann, a French pro on the Winamax team who started with the top chip count of 505,800 and continued playing aggressively, although by later in the day she had dropped down to around 36th in chip counts.
Almost immediately the action ramped up, with eliminations coming fast and furious and at one time reaching around 100 per hour as players furiously tried to build their chip stacks and remain past the magic cash bubble of 666 players, which guarantees a pay check of at least $19,227.
Seven previous main event winners were in the field at the start, and many of these were among the early casualties. two-time winner Johnny Chan, Dan Harrington, Robert Varkonyi, Jerry Yang, Peter Eastgate, Pius Heinz and Huck Seed were all in the starting line-up, but when InfoPowa went to press in the early hours of the morning Vegas time Yang, Eastgate, Pius and Varkonyi had all been eliminated.
They were in good company – a quick look at the long list of poker stars who busted out during Day 3 illustrates the quality of the field in this $10,000 buy-in spectacular:
2011 November Niner Ben Lamb, Matt Giannetti, Martin Staszko, Badih Bounahra, Marco Traniello, Nenad Medic, Nam Lee, David Pham, cricket superstar Shane Warne, Barry Greenstein, Faraz Jaka, Shannon Shorr, Leif Force, Nick Schulman, Eugene Katchalov, Brian Hastings, Soi Nguyen, Sammy Farha, John Racener, Jeff Shulman, Vicky Coren, Earl Barron, Farzad Bonyadi, Karina Jett, James Dempsey and this year's WSOP National Championship winner, Ryan Eriquezzo are all out of the main event.
Just over six hours into the competition barely 1,005 players remained in contention, and by level 14, when Ben Alcober became the first to reach the one million chip mark, the survivors has shrunk to 860 players.
When we went to press the top chip counts looked like this:
The top 10:
Benjamin Alcober (1.0 million in chips)
Ben Greenberg (885,000)
A.J. Jejelowo (880,000)
Sean Rice (835,000)
Erik Hellman (807,500)
Cylus Watson (760,000)
Paul Volpe (720,000)
Marc Wright (700,000)
Dane Lomas (683,000)
Daniel Rudd (630,000)
Still in the field – but way down on the chips list – are Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier, Shaun Deeb, Sorel Mizzi, Freddy Deeb, Andrew Lichtenberger, Marvin Rettenmaier, Antonio Esfandiari, Johnny Chan, John Juanda, and Hollywood actor Kevin Pollak.
