Wpt Championship Six top players remain

4/24/10 – With Day 6 of the World Poker Tour Championship at the Bellagio just ended, there are now six players left from an original field of 195, among them many of the top pros in the game.
 
Although the total entries for the championship event were disappointingly down on last year’s 338, a prize pool of  $4 728 750 was generated, ensuring that the last 18 players standing would cash, and the final 9 players benefit as follows
 
1st: $1,530,537
2nd: $1,034,715
3rd: $587,906
4th: $329,228
5th: $246,921
6th: $199,888
7th: $152,856
8th: $105,823
9th: $75,252
 
By the end of Thursday’s Day 5, the final ten players and their chip counts were:
 
John O’Shea: 3,174,000
Scotty Nguyen: 2,637,000
David Benyamine: 2,561,000
David Williams: 2,459,000
Billy Baxter: 2,429,000
Eric Baldwin: 2,130,000
Cliff Josephy: 1,269,000
Shawn Buchanan: 1,087,000
Nikolay Evdakov: 922,000
Phil Hellmuth: 839,000
 
This stellar field was further whittled down to just six finalists on Friday’s Day 6 games, and the following will appear in the televised grand finale at 4pm PT Saturday:
 
Seat 1.  John O'Shea  –  1,200,000  (12 bb)
Seat 2.  Billy Baxter  –  2,440,000  (24 bb)
Seat 3.  Eric Baldwin  –  4,490,000  (44 bb)
Seat 4.  David Williams  –  4,700,000  (47 bb)
Seat 5.  David Benyamine  –  4,705,000  (47 bb)
Seat 6.  Shawn Buchanan  –  1,965,000  (19 bb)
 
All eyes will be on Shawn Buchanan, who will become the first player to win both the WPT World Championship and the WPT Player of the Year in the same season…if he prevails.

The winner will earn respect for having outlasted names like Daniel Alaei, Tom Dwan, Andy Bloch, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Brandon Cantu, Phil Hellmuth, Faraz Jaka, Justin Bonomo, Soheil Shamseddin, David Wiliams, Kevin Saul, Annette Obrestad and WSOP finalist  Jeff Shulman.