The World Poker Tour has pulled into the Borgata in Atlantic City for their latest event, the Borgata Poker Open, and it has once again shown to be one of their bigger events of this Season XVI schedule or otherwise. Coming into Wednesday’s action, the 1132 entry field had been whittled down to 117 players; by the end of the Day 3 play, nearly four-fifths of that field were gone with New Jersey native and former “November Niner” Cliff Josephy atop the standings.
The 117 players who came back on Wednesday were looking to claim a piece (a min-cash was worth $6812 and a Hendon Mob flag) of the prize pool, but some of those coming back wouldn’t be so happy. With 110 players earning a prize, that meant seven players would exit the Borgata empty-handed. One player who was guaranteed something for his efforts was chip leader David Gerassi, whose 1.322 million stack made sure that, save for a massive collapse, he was going to be around deep into the money.
With the Action Clock on the field (the WPT this year has instituted a 30-second “shot clock” to move play along; the clock is turned on when the tournament reaches one table before the money), the play was quick coming off the starting gun. Jared Jaffee doubled through Walter Taylor in a classic race, pocket Jacks versus A-Q, and plenty of other action was being pushed on the tables. Still, it would take almost 2½ hours for the seven players to get knocked out, with the elimination of Jordan Siegel in 111th place ($0) when his flush draw failed to come home against Joseph Giulino’s pocket eights.
Now in the money, the players flooded the cage. ClubWPT qualifier Jim McLaughlin, Jaffee, and Maurice Hawkins found their paydays for their efforts, but Josephy didn’t want to leave the party. After coming into the day in fourth place, Josephy kept his stack climbing as day worked into night. He bumped off Brandon Hall in 64th and John Moore in 63rd place to rocket over the two million chip mark and would ride that stack to the dinner break as the chip leader.
With 51 players coming back from dinner, there was still a great deal of work left to get the field to a reasonable number for Friday’s action. Gerassi remained viable in the tournament, eliminating Ben Zamani in 50th place, but Josephy kept his foot on the gas. Josephy eliminated Ken Aldridge to crack the three million chip mark, but he saved his best for a clash with Gerassi.
On a J-9-9 flop, Gerassi would check-raise a bet from Travis Greenawalt and a Josephy call to 231K. Greenawalt didn’t have any further interest, but Josephy did. After Josephy called, an Ace came on the turn that slowed down Gerassi a bit. He would check, but Josephy wanted to keep playing as he bet 175K. Gerassi’s previous bravado melted away as he shot his cards into the muck while a tricky Josephy showed the table his pocket nines – the flopped quads obviously had Gerassi beaten from the flop at the minimum.
Josephy would ride that stack to the final gun, the only player to bag up more than four million chips at the conclusion of play:
1. Cliff Josephy, 4.079 million
2. Matt Parry, 3.398 million
3. David Gerassi, 3.354 million
4. Gregory Weber, 2.651 million
5. Will Givens, 2.426 million
6. Benjamin Morgan, 1.958 million
7. Richard Bai, 1.364 million
8. Vittorio Faricelli, 1.287 million
9. Johanssy Joseph, 1.233 million
10. Jason Gooch, 1.148 million
With 24 players remaining in the tournament, it is a bit too early to crown anyone the champion yet. Friday’s play will take the 24 players down to the six-handed official WPT final table, which will play out on Saturday. All the remaining players are guaranteed a payday of $16,306, but it is the $789,058 up top that will be the target for everyone as the WPT looks to crown their latest champion.
