The World Series of Poker Main Event competition continued Friday when the 3,480 survivors of the record third starting flight battled for a position in the combined field Saturday.
At the end of the 10-hour day Californian fruit farmer Ignacio Sanchez led the 1,668 players still active, holding the lead with 627,200 in chips, with his closest rivals Eric Sfez (551,600) and Matthew Klapstein (531,700).
Among Friday’s survivors were notable names Liv Boeree, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Todd Brunson, Martin Finger, Andy Bloch, Sylvain Loosli, Fatima Moreira de Melo, Men Nguyen, Patrik Antonius, Jessica Dawley, hedge fund exec David Einhorn, Brandon Shack-Harris, Shannon Shorr, Barbara Enright, John Juanda, record WSOP bracelet holder Phil Hellmuth, Damian Salas, Chino Rheem, Paul Volpe, Loni Harwood, Eugene Katchalov, Dan Heimiller, Barry Greenstein, James Obst, Steve Billirakis, Chris Moorman, and 2002 Main Event winner Robert Varkonyi.
The day’s survivors join those from the combined first and second starter fields on Saturday, making a combined field of 2,799 players, all that remains of the 7,874 players who originally registered for the competition.
At the very least they will all be hoping to make it through to the money bubble which pops on the 1,182nd player and will pay a minimum of $15,000…but the real prize will be the first place reward of $8.8 million.