World Series of Poker, Day 3

Today, the 5th day of the World Series of Poker, begins the 3rd day of the World Series of Poker. How is that? Well there were so many entries that they had to divide them up into three groups for the first day's play. 1/3 played their first day last Thursday, down to about 600 players, then the second 1/3 on Friday and the last 1/3 on Saturday. Sunday they all merged for day two for everyone and played down to 569 players. Day 3 should begin any moment. The average chip count is about $98,000 going into day 3, with the highest chip count being $464,000. Interesting to note that last year's winner, Greg Raymer, is currently in the top 10 in chip counts with $319,000. With his aggressiveness, a big stack of chips is a huge advantage. If he just catches average cards, he could well end up finishing high again this year.

They'll be starting out today playing hand-for-hand because they're almost to the magic number of 560. That's how many players will finish in the money, so the first 9 players to go out today will win nothing for their efforts. After that, everyone's in the money and things should loosen up a bit as players try to build their stack up enough to survive the winnowing process. I had a similar experience yesterday in a small tournament that paid 4 places. When it got down to 5 people, play got very tight as no one wanted to be the last guy to miss out on the cash. At the point where we got to 5 players, I was in 4th place but took advantage of the tight play to pick up several small pots and move up to 2nd place by the time the short stack picked up pocket kings against the big stack's pocket aces and was busted out. The first hand after we got to 4 players, another player immediately went all in with a marginal hand and I knocked him out when I flopped a set. I ended up winning the tournament.

Other big names left with money who could be a big threat include Lee Watkinson ($337K), Michael (the Grinder) Mizrachi ($295K), Jim Meehan ($212K), Layne Flack (who I understand dominated the feature table yesterday - $188K), JC Tran ($179K), Swingin Sammy Farha ($174K), former WSOP champion Russ Hamilton ($145K), Paul Darden ($144K), John Juanda ($141K), Howard Lederer ($128K), Mike Matusow ($120K - and he's already had one of his patented blowups, getting a 40 minute penalty for dropping several F-bombs on day 1), Phil Ivey ($89K), Clonie Gowen ($64K), and Kiril Gerasimov ($63K). Anyone below that point will have to get extraordinarily lucky to continue on, but I'm sure a few will. A total of 5619 players began the main event, more than double last year's entries. First prize will be a record $7.5 million and everyone at the final table will get at least $1 million.