After another six levels of play on Thursday, the final 19 contenders have been determined for the World Poker Tour’s Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Atop the standings is an unknown commodity, Ryan Tosoc, who has a host of known pros and a former NFL defensive lineman in hot pursuit.
The Day 4 action started innocently enough with the drive to determining who would get paid from the event. 75 players came back to the tables Thursday afternoon, but three of those people would have rather stayed in bed. The reason? They would receive exactly $0 for having put in three days of work and not receive any return on the $10,000 (at the minimum, as it was an unlimited rebuy tournament) buy-in.
Instead of waiting to get down to the bubble, Bellagio officials chose to move into hand-for-hand play to start the day’s action. There was hope by the staff that, by taking this action, the bubble would pop sooner rather than players delaying the action through tanking and “Hollywooding” on the cusp of the payout. Instead of popping the bubble quickly, however, it seemed to extend the agony for the players rather than shorten it.
Part of the situation was that players kept getting double ups. Brandon Meyers found a double through Dzmitry Urbanovich only four hands in, keeping Meyers alive, and Kristina Holst did the same thing at the same time in a hand against Tyler Reiman. It took a three-way pot about 45 minutes into the day’s play before an elimination would occur.
Moving all in from under the gun, Keith Lehr had to be a bit concerned when both Darren Rabinowitz (who moved all in from the hijack) and Dan Smith (who called out of the big blind) decided to look him up. Smith had a pocket pair of Queens to take against Rabinowitz and Lehr, who both held Big Slick, and the 10-6-3-6-5 board looked OK for Smith until you considered the suits. With four clubs on the board, it became a question of who had a club amongst their hole cards. That fortunate individual was Rabinowitz, whose A♣ played to take both the side pot with Smith and the overall pot, knocking off Lehr in the process.
Two hours into hand-for-hand play, only one player (Lehr) was eliminated and the players were beginning to get a bit restless. One of those restless souls was Mike Matusow, who raised up the small blind of Dan O’Brien to see a J-10-3 flop. O’Brien would check-call a bet from Matusow to see a Queen come on the turn and the fuse was lit. This time O’Brien would check-raise the turn bet out of Matusow, bringing an all-in three-bet from Matusow and an immediate call from O’Brien. Both had straights when the cards were on their backs, but O’Brien’s A-K gave him Broadway and Matusow’s 9-8 left him with the sucker end of the deal. Drawing dead, Matusow left the floor in 74th place ($0) as hand-for-hand continued.
After almost three hours of hand-for-hand tedium, it was chip leader Ryan Hughes who finally took care of the situation. 22 hands into the day (yes, 22 hands in nearly three hours), Jerry Wong pushed his chips to the center and Hughes nearly beat him into the pot with his call. Wong’s pocket Jacks looked good, but Hughes’ pocket Kings looked even better. After a ten-high board was laid out, Wong was out on the money bubble and Hughes extended his lead.
With everyone now guaranteed at lin 2east $22,251, things lightened up as the payouts began. Mark Radoja, Aaron Massey, Joe Hachem, David Pham, Haixia Zhang, Anatoly Filatov, Jesse Sylvia and Urbanovich were just some of the players who departed before the dinner break. After dinner, Hughes took some hits to his stack and, after doubling up James Romero, fell under the chip average for the first time in almost three days. Hughes would never recover from that hit to his stack, eventually departing in 21st place for his efforts.
The day was particularly nice for two participants. Richard Seymour, who holds three Super Bowl rings from his time with the New England Patriots (he would finish his career in 2012 with the Oakland Raiders), has segued into poker to soothe his competitive beast and he has some game to his walk. After starting the day with about 270,000 in chips, Seymour had broken the million chip mark after the dinner break. Although he would fall back to the pack by the end of the night, Seymour will be one of the players to watch on Friday as a potential final tablist.
The other player who made some noise was Tosoc. In a three way all-in situation just after midnight, Tosoc was up against both Jared Jaffee and Christian Christner and had the goods for battle. His pocket Aces stood up over Jaffee’s pocket Kings and Christner’s pocket treys, with the resulting 3.3 million pot pushing Tosoc into the lead. Jaffee suffered a significant hit to his stack but was still alive with 700K in chips, while Christner hit the rail in 22nd place. That pot alone made sure that Tosoc would be the chip leader going into Friday’s action:
Ryan Tosoc, 3.492 million
Justin Bonomo, 2.687 million
James Romero, 2.03 million
JC Tran, 1.806 million
Stephen Graner, 1.655 million
Jake Schindler, 1.289 million
Rob Wazwaz, 1.28 million
Bob Buckenmayer, 1.212 million
Alex Condon, 1.189 million
Igor Yaroshevsky, 1.065 million
While he has been around since 2012, Tosoc hasn’t exactly made an impact on the tournament poker world. Since his first cash in a World Series of Poker Circuit preliminary event four years ago, arguably Tosoc’s biggest achievement would be his final table finish in the $1 million guaranteed finale of the Deepstack Extravaganza 3.5 at the Venetian in September of this year. That $125,523 payday was the largest one of his career – unless he finishes this tournament in eighth place or better.
Tosoc, Seymour and the remainder of the 19-player field will play tonight until the official six-handed WPT final table is set. That will put everything in place for Saturday’s final table action, which will be taped for broadcast on the Season XV schedule of the WPT on Fox Sports Network in 2017.