As we mentioned yesterday, there are no guarantees in tournament poker, no matter how many chips you have at any given point. But knowing that, it sure feels good to have the bulk of the chips with only eighteen people left in a World Poker Tour event. That is the situation Chad Eveslage finds himself in going into the penultimate day of the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown Main Event at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida. With 10.760 million chips, Eveslage has more than twice the number of chips as his closest competition.
Eveslage has nearly $1.3 million in career earnings on the live tournament circuit. His largest cash was for just over $100,000 when he finished 66th in the 2014 World Series of Poker Main Event. That is his only six-figure cash; most of the rest of his cashes are for four- and five-figures, with none more than $64,000.
“It was probably the best I’ve ever run in this six-or-seven-hour span,” he told WPT.com when Day 3 was complete. “I didn’t really face any adversity. I got it in bad against Aaron Mermelstein, and had six outs. I drilled for about 3 million and just kept making hands. It was pretty much like that all day. It was the easiest day ever.”
Aside from the aforementioned six-outer when he beat Mermelstein’s Queens with A-K, Eveslage had a couple other huge hands. The first was when he took the chip lead. Timothy Banks raised pre-flop to 30,000 and Eveslage re-raised to 100,000. Banks called and the flop came down 4-5-T with two spades. Eveslage bet 80,000, Banks check-raised to a staggering 600,000, and after some consideration, Eveslage re-raised to 1.2 million. Banks called and on the 5c turn, he bet 2 million chips. Eveslage moved all-in for 3.725 million. After a chip count and three time extensions, Banks finally folded and Eveslage had a stack of 8.355 million.
On the final hand of the night, Ari Dinov bet 85,000 pre-flop, Eric Afriat called, Keith Ferrera, the chip leader going into the day, moved all-in for 1.275 million, and Eveslage shoved all-in over the top for 9.270 million. Dinov and Afriat folded, as Eveslage probably planned, and the cards were revealed. Ferrera had A-K and Eveslage had Aces. Ferrera paired his King on the river, but it wasn’t enough and he was eliminated in 19th place, setting up the action for Tuesday.
Wednesday’s Day 4 will proceed until the six-handed final table has been determined. This is one of the delayed final table tournaments, so the event will pause at the end of the night and the six remaining players will take a break for a month and a half before duking it out at the Luxor’s HyperX Esports Arena on May 30th.
2019 WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown Main Event – Day 3 Chip Counts
- Chad Eveslage – 10,760,000
- James Carroll – 5,250,000
- Jason Marshman – 4,700,000
- Jerry Robinson – 4,400,000
- Maria Ho – 4,175,000
- Danny Qutami – 4,085,000
- Ryan D’Angelo – 3,900,000
- Vladimir Vasilyev – 3,185,000
- Dan Chalifour – 2,935,000
- Ami Alibay – 2,720,000
- Jerry Wong – 2,045,000
- Taylor Black – 1,460,000
- Eric Afriat – 1,040,000
- Ari Dinov – 975,000
- Brett Murray – 845,000
- Dien Le – 680,000
- Richard Seymour – 660,000
- Victor Figueroa – 550,000