With 33 players left at the World Poker Tour’s World Poker Finals at Foxwoods, Day Four figured to either be a quick day of play in getting to the final nine players or a long grind of five levels of play. By the time play had been suspended for the evening, Full Tilt Poker pro Mike Matusow had emerged as the leader of the event with ten players left.
The play on Day Four didn’t deviate from the pace that had been set during the early portion of the tournament. Only a few hands past the noon start on Sunday found Danny Shiff out of the event in 33rd place, to be quickly followed by Richard Wallace in 32nd. By the time that the players reached the end of Level 16, there were three full tables remaining.
Gavin Smith probably had some of the toughest luck during the early action. On three occasions, he held pocket aces and made the standard raise; on all three hands, he couldn’t get anyone to take his action. Although he would get paid off on a full house during the same run, he had to regret his luck that no one would join him on one of those three hands and was eventually eliminated in 22nd place.
Joining Smith along the rail as the afternoon wore on were such notable names as Freddy Deeb (28th), Will Failla (25th), Full Tilt Poker pro Phil Ivey (21st) and online poker whiz Kevin Saul (18th). With those names out of the game, you might have expected that there weren’t any top players left to take out, but there were some who made significant inroads to become challengers for the latest WPT championship.
Top professional player David “The Dragon” Pham was able to make huge inroads on the leader board during the run of play on Sunday. He doubled up through Charles Marchese early in Level 17 and gradually built up a chip stack of over one million. This will make him a favorite for earning his way to his seventh WPT final table which, if he can accomplish, would place Pham in a four way tie for all-time final tables in WPT history and only one behind the aforementioned Ivey.
Another player who has been hovering around the top ten seemingly the entire event at Foxwoods has been the defending WPT Player of the Year, Jonathan Little. The online phenomenon known as “FieryJustice” has been able to find his way through the 412 player field to be at the ten-handed table as well. By winning the tournament, Little would catapult into the Top Ten in earnings in WPT history.
Leading the field all to the table Monday, though, is the crowd favorite Matusow. While he admitted he was hit with the deck on Saturday, Sunday saw “The Mouth” work his way meticulously through the potential minefields without risking much of the $1 million plus stack he had accumulated. By the time action was called on Sunday night, with ten players remaining, Mike had climbed to the top of the mountain, with the final ten looking as such:
Seat 1: David “The Dragon” Pham – 1,242,000
Seat 2: Jonathan Jaffe – 1,780,000
Seat 3: Jonathan Little – 1,407,000
Seat 4: Dimitri “Jim Dawgs” Haskaris – 945,000
Seat 5: Tom Nguyen – 615,000
Seat 6: Henry Doiban – 591,000
Seat 7: Charles Marchese – 963,000
Seat 8: Jack Schanbacher – 1,600,000
Seat 9: Mike Matusow – 1,857,000
Seat 10: Anthony Newman – 1,391,000
With play scheduled to restart on Monday at Noon Eastern Time, it should be a short day as the remaining players work their way down to the WPT six-handed final table. While Matusow is playing exceptionally well at this point, challenges from Pham, Jaffe and Little should not be unexpected. Additionally, both Schanbacher and Newman could provide some surprises with their chip stacks. Poker News Daily will be on top of the action when it starts again on Monday as the World Poker Finals looks to crown the latest champion of the World Poker Tour.