The World Poker Tour’s (WPT) Legends of Poker is rounding the final turn, about to hit the home stretch. After Day 3 of competition at The Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, California, just 21 players remain out of the 757 that began play. With $758,085 on the line for first place and the current payout at “just” $14,135, there should be some heated battles over the next couple days.
Leading the pack by a wide margin is Jeff Vertes with 2,712,000 chips. With blinds and antes increasing to 12,000/24,000/4,000 as Level 24 begins later today, there is an almost 34 big blind gap between Vertes and his closest opponent, James Carroll (1,900,000 chips). After that, it’s a close race, with David Daneshgar (1,850,000), Joshua Pollock (1,645,000), Mike Eskandari (1,597,000), and Ken Aldridge (1,541,000) all above the one and a half million mark.
Names remaining that poker fans may recognize include Season VI’s Mandalay Bay Poker Champion Shawn Buchanan (1,343,000) and Dan Heimiller (331,000). Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler busted out in 28th place for yet another near min-cash (but then again, don’t we all wish we could cash with his consistency?), Dwyte Pilgrim left in 33rd place, Jonathan Little and J.C. Tran hit the rail in 38th and 39th place, and Amnon Filippi was knocked out in 41st position. Other notables eliminated on Day 3 include Alec Torelli (48th), Allen Cunningham (54th), Gavin Smith (57th), 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion Jamie Gold (67th), 2010 WSOP November Niner Soi Nguyen (70th), and Greg “FBT” Mueller (78th).
One of the chip leader’s most interesting hands of the day occurred during Level 22, when he already had a sizable stack of about 2,000,000 chips. Jeff Vertes, Tuan Nguyen, and Ken Aldridge saw a flop of Q-9-9. Nguyen checked, Aldridge bet 85,000, and Vertes called. It was all a ruse by Nguyen, though, as he re-raised all-in for 146,000. Both Aldridge and Vertes decided to make the call. After the 7c was dealt on the turn, Aldridge bet 150,000, causing Vertes to fold J-9 face up for all to see. Vertes must have gotten a little sick when the last 9 was dealt on the river, a card which would have made him Quads. As it turned out, Nguyen had Q-J and Aldridge had K-Q, so the result was a chopped pot, as both made a full house, 9’s over Queens.
As mentioned earlier, 757 players registered for the $3,500 + $200 event, but the composition of those 757 runners was a bit of a departure from the usual. 322 players signed up for Day 1A, but for the first time in WPT history, players were allowed to re-enter the tournament on Day 1B (for another buy-in, of course), if they busted out during Day 1A. More than 60 percent of the players who were eliminated on Day 1A tried again the following day. Therefore, there weren’t technically 757 people playing the event; more like 757 buy-ins were paid.
Play is scheduled to resume at 1:00pm local time on Monday. The tournament will run until the final six players are determined, at which point play will be paused until Tuesday.
