After three full days of play in the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event the number of players still in the hunt for the coveted title has been slashed down to just 720 players from the starting field of 6,598. Unfortunately for 54 of those players their 2012 WSOP Main Event will end with nothing to show for it, as only 666 players will make the money on Day 4.
Day 3 saw 1,753 players return to the Rio with their eyes on making a deep run in the 2012 WSOP Main Event, but for many of these players it was simply not meant to be, including the likes of Phil Galfond, 2011 WSOP Champion Pius Heinz, 2008 WSOP Champion Peter Eastgate, Barry Greenstein, and the man who was the face of the 2011 WSOP Ben Lamb, all of whom hit the rail on Day 3.
Surviving the day, with varying levels of success, were Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Selbst, Sorel Mizzi, Jason Somerville, Marcel Luske, Antonio Esfandiari, Mike McDonald, Maria Ho, Johnny Chan, John Juanda, Chris Moorman, Andrew Lichtenberger, Freddy Deeb, Phil Collins, Joe Cheong, Erick Lindgren, Liv Boeree, JC Tran, David “ODB” Baker, Jackie Glazier, Huck Seed, Matt Marifioti, Christian Harder, Dan Shak, Bernard Lee, Marvin Rettenmaier, Jason Mercier, NHL star Roberto Luongo, and actor Kevin Pollack.
Here is a look at the Top 10 chip counts heading into the all-important Day 4 of the 2012 WSOP Main Event, which includes three well-known players in Sean Rice, Leo Wolpert, and Paul Volpe:
- Dave D’Alesandro — 1,100,000
- Sean Rice — 1,076,000
- Jacob Balsiger — 1,065,000
- Leo Wolpert — 1,003,500
- Ben Greenberg — 963,000
- A.J. Jejelowo — 928,500
- Daniel Rudd — 834,500
- Jonathan Seelbach — 824,000
- Michael Ferrell — 821,000
- Paul Volpe — 820,000
Amazingly, after three full days of play nobody has separated themselves for the pack as less than 100,000 chips separate the top four players on the leader-board. Day 2 chip-leader Gaelle Baumann also survived Day 3, but only increased her stack ever so slightly, bagging-up just under 600,000 chips at the end of the night.
Day 4 will once again begin at Noon local time, and is scheduled to see five more 2-hour levels play out. It could be a very long day depending on how long the hand-for-hand play goes this year, possibly adding upwards of 30-minutes to an hour to the length of Day 4.
