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Since then we've had the $17K level, Andrew King (showing as Iran, probably more like Ireland) Yiannis Liperis and Chi Zhang were casualties, as was early big stack Natasha Mercier, serial casher Ryan Hughes and Eric Blair (not that one)
Current payout is $18693 and we have 733 left in, with the only name I vaguely recognise among those out in recent times is Alan Cutler who was on the featured table and made quite an impression, not 100% favourable I must add, a couple of days ago.
$18693
724 Peter Akery
702 Niall Farrell
673 Jonathan Prince
$20411
661 Adam Bonham
No real "names" out in the last 80 or so, 651 left in.
She was going great guns and had around or over 1.5 million chips at one stage. She said that she had 3 big hands in quick succession and unfortunately lost with them all.
Just 4 of the WSOP main event tables are now located in the Amazon room, the rest I think are in the Brasilia room. As tables become free all players should be moved into the Brasilia.
P.S. Play has just concluded for the day in the main.
Taking up from where I left off overnight on the Main
GB exits
580 Sadan Turker $22449
527 Luke Anthony $24867
518 Mark Gardner $24867
504 Kevin Williams $24867
416 George McDonald $27743
314 Liv Boeree $35267
Other notables to fall by the wayside - Allen Cunningham (of course he made his 8th ME cash putting him in very rarified company indeed), Gavin Smith, the powerful Brazilian pair of Thiago Nishijima & Andre Akkari, the last former champion Scotty Nguyen, Perry Friedman, Dieter Good (who wasn't quite good enough), Bernard Lee, Tony Gregg, Chris Vitch, Cate Hall, Matt Glantz, former big stack Rudolph Sawa, Faraz Jaka, Jared Jaffee, Jeff Lisandro (after serving a penalty for an altercation with Jack Effel, Sofia Lovgren, Melanie Wiesner (not a good couple of levels for the female pros) and Ismael Bojang
Enough on who's out, how about those who are left in?
297 in total, so were just a few eliminations away from the $40K payout level, and we have an Argentinian player at the top - Damian Salas, He leads Frenchman Sebastien Comel and Belgian Kenny Halleart in the top 3 (more on Hallaert shortly).
It is a very international top of the leader board, with only 1 American player in the top 13. The really good news is that 3 of those top 13 are British - JP Kelly (shown as John Kelly, from Bucks, Italy!) is 4th, Richard Gryko 5th and Paul Otto 13th.
Behind those, Thissa Desilva and Paul vas Nunes sit inside the top 25, Matthew Moss, Artan Dedusha, Charlie Carrel, Sergi Reixach, Joel Ettedgi & Jack Sinclair making it more than 10% of the top 100 sporting Union Jacks on the report list.
There's more too, John Hesp is 106th, Tom Middleton 141st, Max Silver 149th, Thomas Ward 152nd, Guy Taylor 175th one spot ahead of Tobias Hariefeld, Robert Cowen 256th, Daniel Rudd 276th and finally Alistair Hill is 284th with 270K chips.
I mentioned Hallaert above, he is one of two of last years November Nine still trying for a repeat performance (well not the November Nine this year, but you get my drift) as Michael Ruane also sits with a nice stack for Day 5. Other former November Niners include 3rd placed finishers Antoine Saout, Jake Balsiger & Ben Lamb, sixth placers Eoghan O'Dea & Tom Cannuli and 7th placed in 2008 Chino Rheem.
Mickey Craft who entered the Day with one of the biggest stacks, was very late taking his seat in the morning, allegedly somewhat the worse for wear, but he still managed to basically double his stack during the day and bagged 2.4m. I don't expect him to make the same mistake again today.
Event 74
The play by play in the Little One for One Drop is dealt with elsewhere, but for the record it's 100 players exactly who come back for Day 3, with Daniel Dizenzo from Japan who bagged the biggest stack. He's from Sussex but not Sussex on our South Coast, but Sussex, New Jersey. xxx Brits (including the Sky Trio) are still involved, Andrew Hedley in 35th, Tin Lee 64th, Jordan Cordy-Nice 65th, Craig McDowell 67th and Seb Saffari 86th so 60% of the GB challenge is "our" players.
Two time bracelet winner Dan Heimiller is the top of the well known names just ahead of recent bracelet winner James Calderaro, Matt Berkey is in midfield (after doing some of the ME commentary for Poker Go) as is Matt Affleck, while Chris Ferguson (who Tikay must have missed) and Upeshka De Silva in the bottom 10 stacks.
One player who I had a small laugh at his/her name (I know I shouldn't, but...) is 85th player Je Oh, which got the "Slumdog Millionaire" song going round and round in my head.
Best of luck to the Sky triumvirate in Day 3 play, one more bustout ladders the field up to almost $4K, and then the rungs come fast and furious with a payout raise every 9 eliminations, with the rises becoming very chunky indeed.
Next ladder isn't until position 225, when they payout jumps to $46K
216. Daniel Rudd
212. Joel Ettedgi
210. Matthew Moss
204. Robert Cowen
203. Thomas Ward
200. Paul Otto
All at the $46K mark.
Other departures included David "The Dragon" Pham, Davidi Kitai and Henry Tran
195 left, still a long way from the next ladder to $53K-odd.
The field for the Main is down to double-figures, only 85 players will come back for Day 6 to play down to 27.
Mark Newhouse's run to the FT in both 2013 and 2014 was incredible, well we can have not just one player repeat that fact as both Kenny Hallaert and Michael Ruane from last year's November Nine are still active. Hallaert is in fact making his third successive deep run, and ESPN ran a stat last night that of the last 17 days he's played in the Main Event, he's only been knocked out twice, both times by the eventual Champion.
Robin Hegele from Germany holds the chip lead with a smidgin under 10 million, and when I say a smidgin, I do mean a smidgin as he has 9990000 in chips.
Joshua Horton is second and in third place we find the first Brit, recent bracelet winner Max Silver.
Several other Brits through as the tension builds too. Paul vas Nunes is 16th, Richard Gryko 21st, Artan Dedusha 37th, John Hesp 40th, Thiassa Desilva 64th, and Jack Sinclair 69th.
That means we lost a number of UK players since my last update:
193. Alistair Hill $46096
175. Guy Taylor $46096
165. Sergi Reixach $46096
164. Tobias Hariefeld $46096
And late in the night, three well known British pros said goodbye to the ME
109. JP Kelly $53247
95. Tom Middleton $61929
88. Charlie Carrel $72514 (lost with Kings against Aces)
Other notable eliminations in the top 200
195. Dominik Nitsche
191. Greg Mueller
172. Eoghan O'Dea
159. Randy Lew - Tikay did an entertaining interview with him on the old Sky Poker TV a few years ago
148. Max Pescatori
146. Mickey Craft - the life and soul of the feature tables over the last couple of days
126. Ankush Mandavia
108. Jessica Ngu
107. Jake Balsiger
105. Yuanyuan Li - the last female player in the ME departing disappointingly early
96. Iverson Snuffer - mainly for having a great name
87. Vitali Lunkin
Apart from those mentioned above, there's not much "star quality" left in the final 85. Antoine Saout is another going for his second ME FT (in 2009 he got beat by Joe Cada's two outer which had it gone the other way would probably have left him heads-up with Darvin Moon for the title). Ben Lamb likewise is a former November Niner and Conor Drinan, Marcel Luske, Dario Sammartino and Martin Finger are well enough known but none will set ESPN's hearts racing if they want casual viewers to tune in for the denoument.
Event 74 - Droplet
It's been well reported on the other thread how well our final three Sky Poker Qualifiers did, thanks for the ride guys and thanks to Tikay and all the rest of those present in the Rio for keeping us so well updated
Play has ended for the day with 12 players left and we have a huge chip leader - Matt Berkey who has 12 million chips. His nearest challengers Guiseppe Pantaleo and Martin Lesjo are in the low 5-million range and then no-one else has more than 3 and a half million.
British bustouts on Day 3
93 Tin Lee $3997
81 Sebastian Saffari $5500
47 Craig McDowell $9484
35 Andrew Hedley $14241
32 Raul Martinez Requena $14241
25 Jordan Cordy-Nice $17674
Today there is a 4 hour telecast on BT Sport 3 from 7pm to 11pm but the first 30 minutes will have to be talking heads (hopefully not Maria Ho again) as the TV coverage will be on a 30 minute delay.
And there's also a picture of Liv Boeree and a cactus. I'll leave it there.
Less confusing is that four British players are in the Top 15 of stacks. Jack Sinclair, Paul vas Nunes, Richard Gryko and Max Silver all have over 7 million, with Silver and vas Nunes displaying their talent on the featured table.
Just moved to a featured table is John Hesp, he of the mix-and-matched (or is that mismatched) shirts and jackets. He seems to be having the time of his life and sits nicely in midfield at this point. Lastly Thissa Desilva hasn't been featured at all yet and sits with a comparitively small stack.
All four of the previous November Niners still survive, with Michael Ruane, Antoine Saout & Kenny Halleart sitting next to each other on one table and Ben Lamb picking up chips regularly on another.
Robin Hegele started the day as chip leader, well he's dropped down a couple of places and has been replaced at the top by Daniel Ott.
The big news from this hour was the demise of one of last year's November Nine, Kenny Hallaert at the hands of John Hesp. The hand wasn't featured in full, but the Belgian rivered trip aces, but unfortunately for him, that gave Hesp a Full House. According to ESPN this was Hallaert's 11th WSOP cash in an event of over 6000 entries.
We did lose one more British player in this section of play, and it's no surprise it was Thissa Desilva as he had been nursing a short stack for some time.
The leaderboard isn't quite as Brit heavy as it was an hour ago, Richard Gryko is the only one who has maintained his position as Max Silver, Jack Sinclair and Paul vas Nunes have dropped a bit.
One of those hands where if it came up online, some idiot would be shouting "Rigged" in the chip box saw the elimination of Kevin Song in 59th. Song 4-bet shoved with pocket fives and was looked up by Joseph Michael with pocket nines. The flop of 9-5-9 meant Song, despite having a full house, was drawing dead on the flop.
I'll pick up from here, and round up the droplet in the morning
Event 74 - $1111 The Little One For One Drop
A tournament that seems like it started a lifetime ago, and was enlivened by some superb results for Sky Poker players (well done again to one and all), is finally over and the bracelet is in the mitts of Adrian Moreno.
He had already finished 23rd in the Monster Stack and 19th in the Crazy Eights, and finished off the Series in fine style by coming from 11th of 12 at the start of Day 4 to take the bracelet and over $528K.
Norway's Martin Lesjoe was the runner-up and start-of-day chip leader Matt Berkey ended up in third.
The main is down to 28 players, they've just gone on a brief break. I don't know whether they are going to play down to 27 or play the full hour of the next level that was originally proposed. Full report when they decide to stop anyway.
Event 73 - The Main Event, Day 6
Another long and gruelling day (for some players this will have been the fifth successive 13 hour day) has seen the field reduce to just three tables.
From my earlier post, we lost two British players in quick succession, Paul vas Nunes in 55th for $121K and Artan Dedusha (who has gone for good this time!) in 52nd for $145K
While still at the $145K paypoint we breached the final 50 of the over 7000 player field
50 Cosmin Joldis, last Romanian player
49 Gregory Goldberg
48 Jae Hwang
47 Mike Linster
46 Nick Guagenti
Pay jump to $176K
45 Max Silver. Max had been doing really well at the Featured Table, but it looks like it all went sour quite quickly. A failed bluff on Daniel Turner lost half of his stack, most of the rest went when his AQ didn't improve against Alexandre Reard's AK and his last 10 BB went in with sevens against Scott Blumstein's Jacks, which held.
44 Jesus Blanco, last Spanish player
43 Dario Sammartino, last Italian player
42 Brandon Meyers
41 Ryan Leng
40 Frank Crivello
39 Sean Gibson
38 Jonathan Dwek. Dwek has got himself a whole lot of TV time with his Superman outfit, but his ME came to an end, getting his last 5 million chips in on a rivered straight, but unfortunately for the Man of Steel, he ran into Christian Pham's straight flush. This took Pham into a large chip lead with over 25 million in chips
37 Zu Zhou
Pay jump to $214K
36 Travis Lutes
35 Matt Bond. Richard Gryko took him out after a flip pre-flop and the British player pairing his Ace on the flop
34 Dann Turner
33 Andrew Ostapchenko
32 Chris Wallace
By this stage, fatigue was beginning to set in, reports elsewhere indicate John Hesp and Antoine Saout in particular were playing tired. Ben Lamb, well used to late night sessions in high stakes cash games began to take advantage
31 Joshua Marvin. Marvin's 5-bet shove pre-flop with AJ was insta-called by Valentin Messina who held AK. Three 10s and a couple of low cards on the board meant the AK held and Marvin left the table
30 Justas Vaiciulionis. The last Lithuanian remaining, he was another to fall at the hands of Gryko
Messina, Pham and Lamb were now fairly close at the top of the chip listing, with Marcel Luske (as he had been most of the day) one of the short stacks.
29 Neil Patel. Former chip leader Daniel Ott was a spot behind with his kicker pre-flop (A9 to Patel's A10) but a 9 on the flop changed things and Patel hit the rail.
28-handed play went on for over an hour and a half, and with just one more elimination to go before the players could say they made Day 7, the tension was high. A couple of shoves got through (in successive hands, both against Jonas Mackoff who folded quickly both times), and the first all-in called was when Michael Krasienko shoved with Queens and got called by Robin Hegele. The ladies held up and Krasienko had his double up and was off the immediate danger list. John Hesp got one nice pot on a three-way flop where the other two folded to a 800K bet, then he made another nice profit when he 5-bet shoved pre-flop on Ben Lamb to pick up 3m, and a few minutes later was at it again taking 6m off Daniel Ott when a hand went to showdown with the Brit's two pair being good.
28 Joshua Horton. Jack Whitehall, no sorrry Jack Sinclair and Horton saw a flop with 2 hearts and after a bet and a call, saw a turn card which was another heart. All the money went in, with Sinclair having A3 of hearts and Horton, the player at risk holding J8 of hearts. Horton had an open-ended straight flush draw on the river to save his tournament life, but it was a spade and his tournament, and everyone else's Day 6 was over.
The final hand brought Sinclair up to 3rd spot, and the highest of the 3 British players left in the event. John Hesp is still battling on (I hope he has a clean multi-coloured shirt for Day 7) in 6th and Richard Gryko is 11th.
Christian Pham is the chip leader with Messina, the top of no less than 4 French players still alive in 2nd. Ben Lamb going for his 2nd FT is 4th, Antoine Saout, in the same situation is 15th and Michael Ruane, who of course is going for Back-to-Back FTs is 16th.
Other nationalities involved are Portugal, Germany (2), Russia, Argentina (2), Canada, Netherlands and Czech Republic with the balance of the field being 10 American names.
With the drop to 3 tables, we have arrived at another pay jump and the next nine players to go will all take $263K
27. Robin Hegele
The Day 5 chip leader, Hegele, lost out in a huge confrontation with Jack Sinclair. Sinclair raised pre-flop, Hegele 3-bet to 1.8m and then the Brit shoved enought to put Hegele all in (another 5 million or so). Hegele had queens, Sinclair A10 and the ace of clubs on the turn sealed the German's fate
And while I was typing that
26. Michael Skleinicka
The Czech came in with the short stack, and went out to Christian Pham. Both players had an ace, and when another ace came on the flop all the chips went it, and Pham's better kicker was the difference when the river was a blank.
Elsehere, Marcel Luske has doubled up and John Hesp has taken a chunk of Jack Sinclair to move him into the chip lead. Brits 1 & 2 at this stage, with over 30m chips each. The average stack at the FT will be somewhere around the 40m mark. The third Brit, Richard Gryko is still sitting in the middle of the field, on more or less the same stack as he started the day with.
25. Florian Lohnert
Down to 14 BB, he picked up a pocket pair (sixes) and decided that was enough to shove with, but unfortunately for him, sitting directly on his left, Christian Pham had a pair of nines. No six came and Lohnert was sent to the rail.
24. Jake Bazeley. Hand not reported yet.
Play entered Level 33 (150K/300K with a 50K ante - the ante now the same as the Day 1 starting stack.
Edit - the WSOP are now placing Bazeley 25th and Lohnert 24th, not that it makes a huge amount of difference. Bazeley went out in a classic race, his pocket 10s being looked up by Ben Pollak with AK, and there was an ace on the flop.
23. Marcel Luske
22. David Guay
The veteran Dutchman has been battling a short stack for seemingly ages and his run of double ups. He held A8 but Ben Pollok's pocket Jacks dispatched the last Dutch player from the Main Event.
Guay 3-bet a raise from Valentin Messina for all his chips (5m) with pocket twos, and holding about 14m and AK, Messina called. The flop and turn 6-7-10-9 gave the Canadian a whole lot of safe cards for the river, but the Ace of diamonds was not one of them and Guay bid farewell to the Main for another year.
Jack Sinclair still holds the big stack, John Hesp having dropped down to third, marginally behind Scott Blumstein.
We still have two players from Hoboken, New Jerset (just across the Hudson from Manhattan) - Michael Ruane & Randy Pisane although both are now shortish stacked, and Blumstein is from only 30 miles away in Morristown.
BT Sport 1 coverage starts in 10 minutes for a couple of hours.
21 Jonas Mackoff
Mackoff falls to Jack Sinclair, A9 against AJ and no dramas on the board.
Still 4 French players left at this point, and in French on French action, Antoine Saout doubles through Messina. 21 French players cashed in all in this years ME.
20. Randy Pisane
Pisane had pocket queens, bet a 10-9-x flop for 1.7m, Hesp raised with A9 to 3.5m and Pisane went all in for about another million more. Hesp stopped and thought about it for a while but really had no option to call considering the pot odds and he celebrated when an Ace came on the turn. It was a third heart though, and with Pisane having the Queen of hearts, it gave him a 25% chance on the river, but the card was a blank and Hesp knocked out another one to reduce the field to the teens.
19 Christian Pham
He picked a bad spot to bet into Ben Pollak, because the Frenchman had the aces. Another on the flop, but giving Pham a flush draw, but the final card was of no help and Pham went from 1st place to out of the Main Event in about three hours play.
This of course means a reduction to two tables, a re-draw for seats and a payjump to $340,000. The next ladder will be to 15 players, and a mighty fine ladder it will be, for over $100K
The first bustout from the final two tables must have happened just after I called it a night, and unfortunately it was one of the three remaining British players
18. Richard Gryko $340K
Gryko hadn't been able to get much going on Day 7, so when Antoine Saout raised to 1m from Under The Gun and it folded around to Gryko who held KQ, he put his last 7m or so. Saout didn't snap call, but call he did and showed pocket tens. There was no help for Gryko on the flop or the turn, and to add insult to inury the river was a third ten.
By contrast, Michael Grisienko had been rather active but his run came to an end in a textbook cooler, his pocket queens coming up against Jack Sinclair's Kings and not improving.
17. Michael Grisienko $340K
As level 34 came to a close, Jack Sinclair had amassed over 66m chips, with Scott Blumstein on almost 50m and Ben Pollak third on 34m. John Hesp continued to be involved in lots of pots and had dropped a few, but still had a very healthy stack, as did Saout.
16. Alexandre Reard $340K.
Reard managed a short stack for most of the Day, and with about 13 BB and the level rise imminent, he must have been loving life when he picked up AQ Under The Gun, and of course all those 13BB went in. What didn't make him happy was that, in the Small Blind, Ben Lamb was sitting with AK. An easy call from the former November Niner and five cards later, the Frenchman was being escorted to the payout cage.
Sinclair continued to chip up, often at the expence of Hemp while on the other table Richard Dubini was beginning to get agressive, opening several pots in a row, winning several without a flop being needed.
As dinner break approached, Sinclair's seemingly unbroken upward trend slipped a little. He lost three hands in quick succession, one to Hesp, and two to Pedro Oliveira. None of them by themselves huge hands but a couple of million here, a couple of million there and his large lead had been whittled down somewhat.
Shortly before the break, the French challenge was down to 2
15 Valentin Messina $450K
With the price of poker getting more expensive, Messina's stack had dribbled down to the point where he only had about 8BB. Lamb raised to 1.1m and after it folded around to Messina in the Big Blind with JQ, he shoved and Lamb duly called with AJ. Lamb dominated Messina. The latter did pick up a gut shot on the flop, but nothing came to help in on the turn or the river and he was eliminated.
On the very next hand on the same table, Scott Stewart 3-bet shoved with pocket Jacks, and was looked up by table chip leader Scott Blumstein who was behind with pocket nines. The flop came three clubs and with Stewart having the jack of clubs, this left Blumstein with only one out. It didn't come and Stewart doubled up.
So at dinner break, Sinclair had 62m and Hesp, Blumstein and Pollak were all in the thirties. Russian Karen Sarkisyan was the short stack, with last year's November Niner Michael Ruane still in the market for a repeat, with his stack being down to 23BB.
After the break, the first significant action involved Ruane, and it saw him come from behind when he was all in pre-flop with Q10 and quickly called by Scott Stewart with AK. A ten on the flop and a queen on the turn gave Ruane two pair but left Stewart with a gut shot to Broadway, but the blank on the river saw Ruane double up.
14. Karen Sarkisyan $450K.
The Russian couldn't hang on any longer and put his last chips in with Q8 suited. The call from Sinclair was for only about 10% of his stack so with pocket twos in the big blind it was an easy call. A Queen on the flop put Sarkisyan in front, but with 2 hearts on the flop and another on the turn it gave the Brit a flush draw, which duly hit and the runner-runner cards knocked out Sarkisyan in 14th.
After hand 163, Bryan Piccoli went to his rail, telling the that his short stack would be in the middle shortly, and true to his word on the very next hand, that' what happened. In they went with the very nice looking KQ of hearts backing them up. Ben Pollak obliged but his J10 was behind and a Queen on the flop and four low cards sealed a double up for Piccoli. On he previous hand, Pollok had taken several million off Sinclair with a straight, so it was you win some, you lose some.
Since then, they played perhaps a dozen hands on each table and he man in the crazy suit (but he was wearing a more sensible shirt today), John Hesp has re-taken the chip lead. Sinclair makes it a Brit 1-2 and Blumstein is 3rd. Daniel Ott has quietly chipped back up to 4th, while at the other end of the scale Stewart is the short stack, Richard Dubini (one of two remaining Argentinian players) is 2nd shortie and despite his recent double-up, Piccoli is far from safe.
Play continues with 13 players, next man out claims $535K. I think we'll be here for a while yet.