After three days of play at Foxwoods, poker professionals Soheil Shamseddin and Lee Markholt sit atop the 27 players remaining in the World Poker Tour (WPT) World Poker Finals.
Day Three began on Saturday afternoon with 68 players vying for one of the 36 cash positions that the event paid. Steven Merrifield led the action when the cards flew and was followed by Day One chip leader Todd Terry, Terrence Chan, and Shamseddin. With play being stopped at 27 players, it was figured that the day would be a short one, but the action was hectic nonetheless.
The final woman in the event, Lori Miller, was eliminated early in the day at the hands of Matt “All In At 420” Stout, ensuring the final table would not have a female combatant. World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner Matt “mattg1983” Graham and the final two ClubWPT.com qualifiers, Dean Meyer and Jesse Lopez, followed soon after.
Perhaps no one had a tougher dismissal from a tournament than top poker pro Alex Bolotin, however. Bolotin, who finished this event last year in 13th place and earlier this year won the Ante Up for Africa charity event at the WSOP, first got his chips to the center with Rodney Legendre’s tournament life on the line. Bolotin’s pocket kings had the edge over Legendre’s jacks, but on the turn, a jack fell. Moments later, Bolotin called off the remainder of his chips with pocket tens against Chris Dombrowski’s pocket fives. Irritatingly for Bolotin, a five hit the flop for Dombrowski, eliminating Bolotin after he had the 80/20 edge twice within minutes of each other.
After six hours of play, the money bubble burst with the elimination of Michael Farris. With only nine more players to bump off to end the day, the knockouts then came quickly. Eric “Sheets” Haber dropped in 34th place and, soon after that, Nenad Medic’s run at a second World Poker Finals championship ended with his elimination in 33rd. Merrifield’s run was cut short when he bumped his A-Q into Alexi Lammi’s Big Slick, sending Merrifield to the rail in 28th place.
Then, Markholt began to make his move up the leaderboard. He took a 300,000-plus pot from Cornel Cimpan when he hit trip aces on the flop and used that hand to move into the chip lead. Shamseddin, who admitted he was playing tight earlier in the day, doubled up through Cimpan soon afterwards to take away Markholt’s lead.
Markholt, with his cash in this event, now holds the record for most cashes in WPT history, breaking a tie with Barry Greenstein, who did not compete at Foxwoods. With the cards ready to hit the air on Sunday afternoon, the Top Ten looks like this:
1. Soheil Shamseddin – 945,000
2. Lee Markholt – 812,000
3. Terrence Chan – 764,000
4. Matthew Stout – 687,000
5. Steve Brecher – 592,500
6. Michael Mizrachi – 575,000
7. Frank Calo – 569,000
8. Jason Mercier – 490,000
9. Alexi Lammi – 473,000
10. Eric Froehlich – 425,000
Others who will walk away from Foxwoods with a cash, but have some work if they want to win this WPT title, include Christian “charder” Harder, Adam “Roothlus” Levy, and Kenna James, who will have the short stack as the day begins.
The plan on Sunday is to play down to ten players, who will come back on Monday to determine the WPT six-handed televised final table.
