It was a short Day 4 at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open as the field needed to be reduced from just fourteen players to six to reach the final table. At reached it was, with Pavel Plesuv going into Wednesday’s action with 10.920 million chips and the lead.
Unless Plesuv just goes on a complete roll, it should be a competitive final table. The chip stacks aren’t bunched up, but the gaps are still small enough where the most of the players are going to have to feel threatened by everyone else. After Plesuv, Jim Gilbert as 8.655 million chips and below him is Marius Gierse with 6.180 million. Leading the bottom half is Jeremy Joseph with 5.045 million, followed by Chris Kennedy with 3.800 million. Ravi Raghavan – the winner of the Season XI WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic – is the short stack with 1.320 million chips.
Clearly, Raghavan can’t do too much damage to the top two stacks early on, but the chip leaders are not going to want to double anybody else up.
Plesuv reached the pole position thanks to a massive coin flip pot against James Rann, who entered Day 4 as the chip leader. Pre-flop, Jim Gilbert raised to 125,000 with blinds of 30,000/60,000 and a 60,000 ante. Plesuv re-raised with Queens to 400,000 and after thinking a while, Rann four-bet to 1.100 million. Gilbert got out of there and then Plesuv shoved for 4.405 million. With A-K suited, Rann made the call, putting himself all-in for 3.775 million chips.
The board ran out Jack high, giving Plesuv the pot and sending Rann home in ninth place. Plesuv’s stack at that point was 8.370 million chips.
Pavel Plesuv is not the most familiar name in the world of poker, but he has been quite successful, currently ranking a lofty 39th on the Global Poker Index. His largest cash was for $924,841 when he finished second in the partypoker MILLIONS Germany early this year. More recently (not that that’s not recent), he won an event in the DeepStack Championship Poker Series for $640,062. All told, Plesuv has over $3.5 million in live tournament cashes.
The final table will get underway in just a few hours, scheduled to begin at noon ET at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. PokerGO will have the “live” stream on a thirty minute delay starting at 12:30pm.
2018 World Poker Tour Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open – Final Table Chip Counts
1. Pavel Plesuv – 10,920,000
2. Jim Gilbert – 8,655,000
3. Marius Gierse – 6,180,000
4. Jeremy Joseph – 5,045,000
5. Chris Kennedy – 3,800,000
6. Ravi Raghavan – 1,320,000
