The final days of the 2010 World Series of Poker Championship Event are drawing nigh, with only 78 players left to decide the next World Champion.
Play on Thursday started with 205 runners, led by Canada’s Evan Lamprea, but the true story of the action at the WSOP Main Event sat further down the Top Ten. After not appearing for many of the preliminary events, two time WSOP Main Event winner Johnny Chan came to the felt with a vengeance. Through the first five days (and over 7000 eliminations), Chan battled his way to sit in ninth place with 2.559 million in chips to start play on Day 6. Unfortunately for the last back-to-back winner of the WSOP Main Event, the variances of the game of poker arose to take him down, destroying his meticulously built stack in the span of one hour.
Early during action on Day 6, Chan entered into a preflop battle against Robert Pisano, which eventually led to Pisano getting the remainder of his chips in against the 1987-88 World Champion. Chan confidently tabled his pocket Kings, only to see Pisano have the better of the situation with pocket Aces. After the board ran ten high, two other players at the table informed “The Orient Express” that they had folded his two outs. The carnage left Johnny sitting with only 800,000 chips remaining and Robert on a 4.4 million chip mountain.
Chan patiently waited over the next hour for an opportunity to get back in the tournament and seemingly found it against Jonathan Driscoll. In the cutoff, Johnny moved the remainder of his chips to the center only to have Driscoll immediately call from the button. After the blinds got out of the way, another cooler hit Johnny; his pocket Jacks were once again behind the pocket Aces that, this time, Driscoll held. The board once again ran low (seven high) and eliminated Chan in 156th place.
For those who were looking for the “last woman standing” this year, Breeze Zuckerman provided that excitement. Entering the day in 131st place with 738,000 in chips, Zuckerman was the only woman with a shot at the 2010 WSOP November Nine after the departure of Dorothy Von Sachsen on Day 5. Over the first three hours of play, Breeze was able to work her way up to slightly over 1.1 million in chips and found herself on one of the ESPN television stages. After the move to the big stage, however, Zuckerman bled chips and eventually was eliminated from the tournament in 121st place at the hands of defending CardPlayer Magazine Player of the Year Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, several players used Day 6 to mount their assaults on the top of the leader board. 2010 $50K Players’ Championship winner Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi started the day in 30th place with 1.793 million in chips and used the run of play on Thursday to surge to the top of the mountain. Mizrachi seemed to be on the right side of the action throughout Day 6 and, late in the evening, vaulted into the chip lead after pushing Randy Dorfman and Christopher Bolt out of a pot with a four bet. His stay as the “leader of the pack” was short lived, however, as another charger on the day, Denmark’s Theo Jorgensen, took a pot from “The Grinder” with a river bet ten minutes later to assume the chip lead.
When the cards fly at noon (Pacific Time) on Friday, the remaining 78 players will look up at a strong leader board that includes this Top Ten:
1. Theo Jorgensen 9.3 million in chips
2. Michael Mizrachi 7.535 million
3. John Racener 7.2 million
4. Jonathan Driscoll 6.57 million
5. William Thorson 6.525 million
6. Matthew Jarvis 6.125 million
7. Edward Ochana 5.95 million
8. Alexander Kostritsyn 5.715 million
9. Cuong Nguyen 5.65 million
10. Joseph Cheong 5.555 million
Surprisingly, the Top Ten players have quite the resume in the poker world. Jorgensen is the reigning champion of the World Poker Tour’s resurrected Rendezvous a Paris, which he won back in May, and has $2.3 million in career earnings. Along with his victory in the $50K Players’ Championship, Mizrachi has two WPT titles and $8.8 million in earnings. Racener holds a WSOP Circuit championship ring and has earned $1.18 million in his short career. Thorson is the defending PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Pot Limit Omaha champion and Kostritsyn won the championship of the Aussie Millions in 2009, with each having over $2.3 million in career earnings. All totaled, the Top Ten have earned almost $18 million in their poker careers.
Sitting down the remaining 78 players are several dangerous players. The aforementioned Baldwin is currently at 2.135 million in chips, with European sensation Johnny Lodden on his heels with 2.105 million. Adam “Roothlus” Levy sits in 49th place with his 1.685 million chip stack, with Katy, TX’s David Baker and Full Tilt Poker superstar David Benyamine in pursuit. Day 4 chip leader Tony “Bond18” Dunst, Day 5 leader Lamprea, Hasan Habib and Scott Clements are all within striking distance of the Top Ten.
Friday’s plan of action at the WSOP is to play down to the final 27 players before calling it quits for the night. On Saturday, the battle for the “November Nine” begins as those three tables whittle themselves down to one. By the end of action on Saturday, the poker community will know the names and faces behind who will become the next champion of the World Series of Poker Championship Event.
