High profile poker ace Phil Ivey, who led the chip counts as Day 3 of the World Series of Poker main event started Thursday with a combined field of 1,864 survivors, did not have a good day and is now way back in the chip counts on 552,500.
He wasn’t the only one down on his luck; four of the remaining former WSOP champs in the event – Ryan Reiss, Johnny Chan, Robert Varkonyi and Chris Moneymaker – were eliminated, leaving only Huck Seed still in the shrinking field on just under a quarter million chips.
On the celebrity side, NBA athlete Paul Pierce was a notable elimination during the final level when his two-pair was topped by Christopher Smith’s better two-pair.
Throughout the day an average of 300 eliminations per level were recorded, with almost 1,200 players ending their hopes of winning poker’s most prestigious tournament by the time the fifth and final level of the day started.
The chips were bagged almost an hour early to accommodate television arrangements, but that meant that the magic 693-player money bubble was not reached when officials wound up Day 3.
New Orleans pro Andrew Liporace had the biggest Day 3 chip stack at 1,128,000, closely pursued by Mehrdad Yousefzadeh of Astoria NY on 1,124,000 and Raul Meistre on 988,500.
Five days ago 6,683 players started out in the main event.