WSOP Updates – Five Hour Work Day Gets the Field to 27

August 08, 2006

John Caldwell

WSOP Updates – Five Hour Work Day Gets the Field to 27 0001

The excitement is beginning to build as the field narrows its way down from the 8,773 that started. With the multiple day ones, and day twos, it feels like weeks since this field began to play down from the nearly 9,000 starters to the inevitable final result of….1.

The story for the last few days has been Jamie 'Ari' Gold. After day six, Gold had almost a two to one chip lead on the second chip leader. You have to go back to 2000, when Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson had the field lapped in a big way en route to winning the world championship to see that kind of a chip lead in a WSOP Main Event.

However, there are 26 other players that aren't ready to give the bracelet to Gold just yet, not to mention the 12 million dollars (or 13.5 million if you believe the screens in the tournament room) that go to the eventual winner of this tournament.

But it was Gold who ran things on the abbreviated day six. Gold ran a combination of big hands, and solid big stack play into 13,000,000 in chips – a mile ahead of # 2 chip leader Erik Friberg, who has about 7.7 million in chips.

Day six was destined to be a short day, as the field had only to lose 18 players to end play today. One of the more charming players left in the field departed today, as Costa Rican Humberto Brenes took his act out the door, but did wind up making $329,865 for his troubles.

One player who made a pretty big move was Allen Cunningham. Allen started with about ½ the average chip stack, but worked his way up into contention at about 3.5 million chips, only to get clipped late, and end the days play at about 2.6 million chips.

The average stack entering day seven play is about 3.3 million chips. While this sounds like a lot, after about 40 minutes of play on day seven, when the blinds go up to level 28 (30,000/60,000 with a 10,000 ante) players will be paying 180,000 chips per orbit, so the shorter stacks are going to make a move sooner rather than later.

Day seven will begin tomorrow at noon, and end when the final nine have been determined. Chip counts, and bustouts, and payouts for Day six are below.

Chip Counts

Jamie Gold $13,000,000

Erik Friberg $7,735,000

David Einhorn $6,905,000

Rhett Butler $6,400,000

Michael Binger $5,725,000

Dan Nassif $5,430,000

William Thorson $3,765,000

Jeffrey Lisandro $3,715,000

Kevin Aaronson $3,670,000

Douglas Kim $3,595,000

Richard Lee $3,275,000