It was a short day as expected at the 2016 World Poker Tour (WPT) Fallsview Poker Classic Main Event Tuesday, as it took less than four hours to eliminate six players and get the tournament down to the six-handed final table. Robert Forbes defied history; it is not often you see the chip leader after the first day in a major tournament continue to stay strong and make the final table, but he certainly did. He was in second place after Day 2 and after Day 3, he is back in first by a healthy margin heading into the final table. His 4.015 million chips outpaces his closest competitor, Mike Bui, but over a million.
Forbes’ most significant hand came about halfway through the day. According to the WPT.com play-by-play, Jordan Saccucci raised pre-flop to 80,000 chips and Thomas Archer called. Derek Verrian three-bet to 230,000, Forbes called, and then Saccucci four-bet all-in. Archer and Verrian folded, but Forbes decided to make the call, tabling pocket Kings. Saccucci turned over pocket Tens, putting him in big trouble.
The flop was 9-9-5, rather uneventful. The turn, though produced one of the two remaining Tens in the deck, giving Saccucci a full house and what looked like a gigantic double-up with just nine players remaining. The key phrase there, though, is “what looked like,” as another King was dealt on the river, giving Forbes a better full house and sending Saccucci home in ninth place. That win took Forbes’ chip stack up to 3.65 million, good for the chip lead at the time.
The official final table was determined when Patrick Blye was knocked out in seventh place. Derek Verrian had moved all-in pre-flop for 1.1 million chips and Blye called all-in from the big blind. Blye had pocket Eights and while WPT.com forgot to show one of Verrian’s cards, we’re going to guess he had A-2, possibly suited (all WPT.com showed was the 2), as he ended up winning on a board of A-J-3-T-6.
Though Robert Forbes’s run in this tournament has been mighty impressive, perhaps the biggest story going into Wednesday’s action is the presence of Soren Turkewitsch. Turkewitsch won this very same event a decade ago, when it was called the WPT North American Poker Championship. It was the first World Poker Tour event in Canada. After that, he quit his job at an auto plant and bought a house two years later, where he still lives with his wife and kids.
Turkewitsch is aiming to become the first player in the World Poker Tour history to win the same Main Event twice. He has some work to do to catch Robert Forbes, but he is in decent shape with 1.83 million chips, good enough for third place entering final table play.
2016 World Poker Tour Fallsview Poker Classic – Final Table Chip Counts
1. Robert Forbes – 4,015,000
2. Mike Bui – 2,860,000
3. Soren Turkewitsch – 1,830,000
4. Derek Verrian – 1,565,000
5. David Ormsby – 1,550,000
6. Thomas Archer – 880,000
