With Big Names Out, WSOP Main Event Heads Towards November Nine
Every year at the World Series of Poker main event, fans file into the Rio and get behind the professional player that goes the farthest. This year, fans will have to find a new hero to support down the stretch as many of the top names in the game have made an early departure.
Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Antonio Esfandiari, and Mike Matusow are all players that have made long runs through the main event in past years. In 2012, these players will have to watch the final table in November from the sidelines, as each has been knocked out of the main event long before they had planned.
What is left as Day 6 concludes is 67 players battling it out to be one of the final nine players remaining when the event breaks for a couple of months. When the November Nine is reached, the players will practice for months with the hope that when the tournament finally ends, they will be the one holding up the coveted gold bracelet.
Taylor Paur has become the story of the tournament to date, holding the chip lead with 7,000,000 chips. The lead is slight over Robert Corcione, who holds 6,370,000 chips. Robert Buckenmeyer and Elisabeth Hille are the only other players remaining in the tournament that have accumulated over 5,000,000 in chips.
At the other end of the spectrum, David Luchman, Takashi Oguara, and Danny Wong are holding on for their tournament lives. The three players closest to elimination all have under 1,000,000 chips.
Gaelle Baumann, who was the talk of the tournament early, holding the chip lead through the first few days, has slipped to 25th place, but remains one of two women left in the tournament. The aforementioned Hille is in much better shape to make a final table run, sitting in fourth place.
The main event took a back page to the $1 million buy-in Hold'em event that took place earlier this summer. Esfandiari walked away from that tournament with the richest single payday in poker history, winning $18 million for finishing in first place. Esfandiari immediately jumped to the top of the career earnings leader-board with the monumental and historic win.
Play will conclude Sunday night, and resume on Monday. The final table is expected to be reached by the end of play Monday. At that time, play will be suspended until November.
July 15, 2012
Posted By Tom Jones
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
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