It was a surprisingly long day at the 2014 World Poker Tour (WPT) Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown Main Event on Tuesday, as it took over ten hours to narrow the field from only eighteen to six. But Day 4 did end and the final table has been set with Mukul Pahuja presiding over his opponents with the largest chip stack.
Pahuja entered Day 4 in fifth place out of eighteen with 3,550,000 chips, but took a hit with just thirteen players left, doubling up Barry Hutter to fall to 1,360,000. It just so happens that Pahuja was leading the World Poker Tour Player of the Year (POY) points race going into Day 4 and Hutter was his closest competitor who was still alive in the tournament, so that hand had additional meaning. Pahuja was already guaranteed at that point to retain the lead no matter what happened the rest of the way in this event, but knocking out Hutter would have been nice for him.
Should Pahuja win the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown Main Event, he will clinch the POY title, becoming the first person to ever accomplish that feat before the season-ending WPT World Championship.
Pahuja did eliminate Justin Young shortly after the aforementioned halving of his stack to get up to around 4,000,000 and continued to gradually chip up from there. His most significant hand came late in the day, when there were just eight players remaining. Jacob Bazeley, the chip leader going into Day 4, raised pre-flop to 250,000 (blinds were 60,000/120,000 with a 20,000 chip ante) and Pahuja called. They checked the flop of A♦-Q♥-3♦, bringing about a turn card of the T♠. Pahuja checked and Bazeley bet 575,000, but then Pahuja check-raised to 1,650,000. Bazeley called and the river was the 5♥. Pahuja came out gunning, laying 2,825,000 chips on the table. After much pondering, Bazeley decided to make the call, only to much after Pahuja revealed K♣-J♦ for the Broadway straight. That pot grew Pahuja’s stack to nearly 17,000,000 at the time.
This is Mukul Pahuja’s third final table of WPT Season XII, so it is no wonder he is in the driver’s seat for the Player of the Year award. He previously finished as the runner-up in the WPT Montreal Main Event back in November ($362,430) and placed fourth in the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars Main Event in March of this year ($320,800). He also had a near-miss at the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open, finishing eighth ($36,147) and finished 30th at the WPT L.A. Poker Classic ($36,400).
The final table will commence at 3:00pm ET today with the live stream on WPT.com starting at 3:30pm.
2014 World Poker Tour Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown Main Event – Final Table Chip Counts
1. Mukul Pahuja – 18,895,000
2. James Mackey – 11,680,000
3. Jacob Bazeley – 7,305,000
4. Eric Afriat – 6,760,000
5. Chance Kornuth – 5,315,000
6. Matt Stout – 3,665,000
* Tournament updates provided by wpt.com.
