2022 WSOP Championship Event: Jeffrey Farnes Leads as Final Table Nears

End coming into view

A small percentage of people ever have a moment when they can see their dreams directly in front of them, just waiting to be snatched up. For the 35 players remaining in the 2022 World Series of Poker Main Event, Wednesday is one of those moments. Today is the day that the final table will be determined, one of the final steps to winning the most coveted poker tournament title in the world.

Sitting atop the now short leaderboard is Oregon’s Jeffrey Farnes with 37.825 million chips. It is quite the competitive race to the final table, though, as four other players have over 30 million and two more are just under that mark.

Farnes had a couple huge hands to rocket to the chip lead. Late on Day 6, he and last year’s seventh place finisher, Alejandro Lococo, got into a pre-flop raising war before Lococo ended up all-in with A-Q offsuit and Farnes called with pocket Tens. The Tens held up, Lococo was out, and Farnes grew his stack to 28.500 million chips.

“I just kind of felt like it was time to get one of the toughest players in the field out, so I tried it,” Farnes told WSOP.com afterward. “It was only, I think, 20 percent of my stack to do it so I went ahead and made the gamble. And it was right. So that was cool.”

Not long thereafter, Farnes had pocket Nines, turned trips, and rivered quads to take a sizeable chunk out of Tzur Levy’s stack. That gave Farnes the chip lead with 38 million at the time.

“To get quad nines at the Main Event on Day 6. I don’t know if it gets any better than that.”

Maybe heads-up to win, but yeah, doesn’t get much better.

That’s one way to play a hand

Would you ever risk millions of chips on Day 6 of the WSOP Main Event when you are neither in desperation mode nor the chip lead? In one of the stranger hands of the tournament, Victor Li did just that.

He raised pre-flop to 400,000 from early position blind – he never looked at his hole cards – and Efthymia Litsou, the last woman remaining in the Main Event, called from the big blind. She also said she’d go ahead and do it blind (more on that in a second).

On the 7♣-4♣-3♦ flop, both players checked. When the 2♣ hit on the turn, Litsou bet 3 million. Realizing, as Gob Bluth would put it that he may have “made a huge mistake,” Li said, “What did I get myself into,” and shoved all-in for 5.600 million after finally taking a peek at his cards.

Li had 5♦-3♣, while Litsou had J♣-T♣ for a flush. The river was the A♣ and Litsou doubled-up. Thing was, Litsou had actually looked at her hand, telling Li as much before she scooped up all the chips.

Play resumes at 2:00pm PT and will go until the nine-handed final table has been set.