33 players reconvened at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas yesterday for the penultimate day of the final World Poker Tour event before the World Series of Poker kicks off in earnest later this month.
The first matter at hand was the money bubble, which due to the small field didn’t burst until Eugene Todd was busted by Chau Giang in 28th place. That brought a sigh of relief from all players remaining in the tournament, but for Jared “Wacokid” Hamby it was more significant than most. By surviving the bubble he cashed in his third WPT event in a row, meaning he is one off the record of four consecutive cashes.
With that out of the way Hamby pushed on and began to force his way up the leaderboard, eventually ending the day with the chip lead after Chris Bell made a mistake he will want to erase from his memory forever. On the very last hand of the day Hamby raised to $27,000 from early position and Chris Bell pushed all-in for $186,000. Oops! Hamby insta-called with pocket aces and Bell’s A-9 was pretty much dead in the water.
Day Three also saw strong performances from a number of well known pros, with Barry Greenstein, Chau Giang, David Levi and Danny Wong all making it into the final ten.
Here are the chip counts for the start of play tomorrow:
Jared Hamby - $698,000
Thayer Rasmussen - $685,000
Shawn Buchanon - $658,000
J.C. Alvarado - $541,000
Danny Wong - $465,000
David Haddad - $444,000
Barry Greenstein - $375,000
Chau Giang - $318,000
Ryan Daut - $217,000
David Levi - $158,000