600 players have fallen by the wayside, many of them with big cheques from a total prize pool of $15 125 000, in the WPT World Championships held at the Bellagio in Las Vegas this past few days.
Last night, the top 6 players to survive the gruelling tournament were decided, and the following will take their seats around the final table when play resumes at 4pm Vegas time today (Monday) in the Tower Ballroom:
1 James Van Alstyne 8.07M
2 Joeseph Bartholdi 7.135M
3 Claus Nielsen 5.875M
4 Davidson Matthew 5.765M
5 Roland De Wolfe 1.86M
6 Men ‘The Master’ Nguyen 1.49M
Yesterday’s play started with a field of 19 players that included women champs Erica Shoenberg and Vanessa Rousso, both in the top 10 players still in the hunt. Other players included:
1 James Van Alstyne 4.235M
2 Roland De Wolfe 3.325M
3 Carlos Zambrano 2.985M
4 Victor Ramdin 2.685M
5 Joeseph Bartholdi 2.35M
6 Paul Wasicka 2.245M
7 Erica Schoenberg 1.735M
8 Simon Moussa 1.695M
9 Vanessa Rousso 1.575M
10 Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy 1.255M
11 Davidson Matthew 1.2M
12 Espen Saltnes 1.13M
13 Claus Nielsen 940K
14 Gary Maresh 905K
15 Valentino Morella 525K
16 Chad Brown 485K
17 Patrik Antonius 450K
18 Men “The Master” Nguyen 375K
19 Surinder Sunar 120K
By 10.38 pm last night the blinds were at 80K-160K with an ante of 15K and Shoenberg had been eliminated. As the last woman at the table, Vanessa Rousso played on but was eliminated in 7th place 3 minutes before the close of the day’s action at 10.59pm. Nevertheless, the $263 625 prize packet she collected must have eased the pain a little.
Todays final, with big blinds and fast action is likely to be exciting.