According to the tournament structure sheet, the 2022 World Poker Tour (WPT) Seminole Hard Rock Tampa Main Event was supposed to play down to 24 players on Monday. I suppose the competitors were just having too much fun, though, Day 3 finished with just 16 players as the tournament heads into its penultimate day.
Leading the way is Fred Paradis with 6.975 million chips (wow, I typed “billion” at first – that would be some chip lead). Nobody else has more than 6 million, but it should be a good race to the final table, as three players have over 5 million and four more have at least 4 million chips.
Paradis has already cashed twice at the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Tampa in preliminary events for a bit over $21,000, a total which he has already topped by making it to Day 4 (16th place pays $32,000). He has $713,762 in lifetime live tournaments cashes, with a high cash of $100,000 earned in 2015 for a second place finish at the Foxwoods Poker Classic $600 No-Limit Hold’em event.
Though he still has some chips to work with, it was a disappointing finish to the night for Corey Wade, the chip leader entering Day 3. The poker gods were not on his side for a brief stint, otherwise he would have sitting around the top of the leaderboard.
In the first hand that closed his evening with a thud, Wade had A-Q and called a 2.025 million-chip pre-flop all-in by Kevin Ragusa, who had K-Q. What looked like an easy win and a sweet scoop turned into disaster for Wade (and salvation for Ragusa), as Ragusa flopped a King to double up and take a huge chunk out of Wade’s stack.
A few minutes later, Wade raised pre-flop to 125,000 with pocket Kings and was likely thrilled to see Dimitry Agrachov move all-in for 1.725 million, unless he was an eternal pessimist. Well, in this case, pessimism would have been the right attitude, as even though Agrachov had a dominated A-K, he also out-flopped Wade, hitting an Ace and damaging Wade’s chip collection even further.
With 38 big blinds to start Day 4, Wade still has room to play, but it could have been so much more comfortable.
Day 4 will see the field trimmed from 16 to the final table of six, at which point they will break for the night and return on Wednesday to play down to the champion.
2022 World Poker Tour Seminole Hard Rock Tampa Main Event – Day 3 Chip Leaders
- Fred Paradis – 6,975,000
- Steven McKoy – 5,825,000
- Seth Berger – 5,275,000
- Brock Wilson – 5,075,000
- David Tuthill – 4,975,000
- James Mendoza – 4,775,000
- Kevin Ragusa – 4,050,000
- Donnie Phan – 4,025,000
- Dimitry Agrachov – 3,600,000
- Corey Wade – 2,825,000
