There was plenty of drama after the World Series of Poker Main Event final table kicked off with nine finalists late afternoon Vegas time on Thursday, with Ben Lamb exiting on just the fourth hand after being eliminated by another low stack, Brit Jack Sinclair.
Lamb’s reward for running this deep in the world’s toughest tournament was a ninth placing pay day of $1 million, well short of the $4.02 million he won in the event in 2011 for placing third.
Sinclair had little opportunity to savour the victory and was the next player to go in eighth place for $1.2 million, ousted at hand 64 in an all-in by the aces of Bryan Piccioli. The pot enabled Piccioli to rise to third place in the chip counts.
Play was finally halted early Friday morning local time after hours of exciting poker that saw 7 players still around the table.
Highlights of the day included the spectacular rise and fall of popular English contestant John Hesp (64) who started the day with a massive chip stack second only to chip leader Scott Blumstein’s 97,250,000 hoard.
Hesp went on chipping up until he managed to take the lead away from Blumstein, with both above 100 million chips and well ahead of the rest of the field.
Then disaster befell the Englishman in a clash with Blumstein over a 156 million pot; Hesp lost to Blumstein’s aces and was knocked back to just 24 million chips, whilst Blumstein soared into the lead again, tens of millions of chips ahead of his nearest rivals.
Hesp suffered further misfortune, and is currently at around the middle of the pack on 22.47 million chips.
When the chips were bagged the counts were:
Scott Blumstein 178,300,000
Benjamin Pollak 77,525,000
Bryan Piccioli 35,750,000
John Hesp 22,475,000
Dan Ott 16,350,000
Damian Salas 15,625,000
Antoine Saout 14,550,000
The seven reconvene at 5.30pm Friday Vegas time to play down to the last three. There is almost an hour left of Level 39, with the blinds at 600,000/1,200,000 with a 200,000 ante. Average chip tacks are 51,578,571, and the next player to go will collect $1,425,000 for a seventh placing.