With many, if not most, of the world’s top players occupied with the EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo last week, the latest leg of the WPT was a little thinner than usual. Just 405 players paid up the $10,000 entry fee, and a field shorn of big names simply cried out for a small time player to make his mark on the poker world.

That player looks increasingly likely to be Raj Patel, a strangely conservative player with a background as a betting tipster in the UK. Patel will begin the final table with a huge chip lead over the rest of the players, though his play in accumulating his enormous stack has been bizarre to say the least. Witness the hand when Patel, sitting with almost $3 million in chips, folded A-Q face up after Frankie Flowers moved all-in under-the-gun for $170k and every other player on the table folded (there was already $54 in the pot when Frankie moved in)!

Nevertheless, Patel will begin the final table with $3.357 million chips, more that double his nearest opponent. Such a dominating chip lead will surely make him favourite to take home the $1.27 million first prize.

The chip counts of those hoping to beat him to it are as follows:

(Raj Patel - $3,347,000)

Seth Berger - $1,505,000

Antonio Cavezza - $1,391,000

Fred Goldberg - $1,044,000

Paul Matteo - $570,000

Allen Kessler - $444,000