Lyle Bateman
Lane AndersonThe World Series of Poker (WSOP) is the biggest tournament series in the world. Covering more than 40 days, the WSOP tests skills in many variants of poker and attracts both the biggest names in the game as well as casual players of all abilities from around the globe.
The biggest prize at poker’s big show is Event #68: No-Limit Hold’em Main Event. Also known as the "Big Dance," the Main Event is billed as the World Championship of poker. The player who emerges from the Main Event is billed as poker’s ambassador for the following year, and the special status of the tournament demands a special format.
Unlike every other major poker tournament, the Main Event will not play down to a winner immediately. Instead, once the final nine players are determined, play ends for several months. The "November Nine" spend several months doing media interviews and honing their games before finally meeting again in November at the Rio to finish it out.
The Main Event got down to business Friday as the remaining players from Day 2ab and Day 2c finally converged into one field for Day 3. In addition to seeing players from all the starting flights together for the first time, Day 3 also saw the money bubble burst.
From the initial total of 6,420 players, 1,796 players returned to the felt for the start of Day 3. By the end of the day just 661 players were left in contention for poker’s most prestigious annual trophy.
Leading the way into Day 4 is Amar Anand from Shrewbury, Massachusetts. Already working on his first-ever WSOP cash, Anand’s stack of 1,139,000 chips puts him in good position to make a deep run. Only two other players are above one million chips. Joseph McKeehan, who has eight previous cashes at WSOP, will play 1,052,000 to start Day 4, while three-time bracelet winner Brian Hastings sits in third with 1,034,000.
Canada is still well represented in the Main Event field, with the top two Canadians both bracelet winners. Matt Jarvis of Vancouver, B.C. takes the biggest Canuck stack into Day 4, bagging up 803,000 chips at the end of Day 3 for the 17th-best stack. Charles Sylvestre bagged the second-biggest Canadian stack with 607,500, good for 48th place.
All Canadians taking chips into Day 4 are listed below.
| Player | Chips | Player | Chips | Player | Chips | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matt Jarvis | 803,000 | Charles Sylvestre | 607,500 | Scott Montgomery | 564,000 | Arman Soltani | 555,500 |
| Will Molson | 536,600 | Marc-Etienne McLaughlin | 530,000 | Gareth Struivig De Groot | 513,000 | Miguel Proulx | 455,500 |
| Samuel Gagnon | 445,000 | Daniel Negreanu | 444,000 | Thomas Popov | 434,500 | Joe Lu | 421,000 |
| Jeff Hakim | 413,000 | James Hawley | 384,000 | Thomas Taylor | 375,500 | Jean-Pascal Savard | 340,500 |
| Jonas Mackoff | 331,000 | Matthew Dietrich | 304,000 | David Ormsby | 303,500 | Ping Lin | 253,500 |
| Peter Raimondi | 249,500 | Omri Moga | 244,000 | Hamza Firdawcy | 200,000 | Chanracy Khun | 152,500 |
| Ricky Chow | 152,000 | Angie Gelinas | 145,500 | Max Greenwood | 143,500 | Andre Barrett | 143,500 |
| Dustin Centanni | 143,000 | Adam Hui | 114,000 | Jacob Kipfer | 102,500 | Buck Ramsay | 65,000 |
| Sonu Sharma | 64,000 | Armin Ojani | 63,500 | Gylbert Drolet | 57,500 | Jonathan Duhamel | 53,000 |
| Ryan Smith | 51,500 | Ren Heo Zhang | 46,000 | Michael Forycki | 42,000 |
Not everyone was so lucky to survive Day 3, but 15 Canadians were lucky enough to survive long enough to get paid, listed below.
| Finish | Player | Prize | Finish | Player | Prize | Finish | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 679 | Peter Jetten | $15,000 | 689 | Joseph Bower | $15,000 | 714 | Louis Boutin | $15,000 |
| 743 | Tyler Bonkowski | $15,000 | 744 | Michael Tieu | $15,000 | 748 | Richard Guttman | $15,000 |
| 807 | Evan Jarvis | $15,000 | 828 | Samuel Ngai | $15,000 | 887 | Chaayanath Mysore | $15,000 |
| 897 | Marc-Andre Ladouceur | $15,000 | 942 | Cory Parent | $15,000 | 965 | Michael Bochansky | $15,000 |
| 978 | Raphael Bernard | $15,000 | 981 | David Cowling | $15,000 | 984 | Ryan Mackinnon | $15,000 |
Play resumes on Saturday with Day 4 of the WSOP Main Event and things really start to get exciting as the players start to get into some pay jumps and begin playing for larger prizes. Check back with PokerNews Canada for a recap of the action with a focus on the Canadian contingent.
Details courtesy of the WSOP Live Blog.
Get all the latest PokerNews Canada updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!
What do you think?