Jeremy Becker, Once a Daily Tournament Crusher, Now a WPT Day 5 Chip Leader
The money is starting to get serious now that the $10,400 buy-in WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas has advanced to Day 5, which kicks off at noon PT on Friday.
No player will return to action with a bigger stack than Jeremy Becker, who spun it up late, and he's doing it in the same casino he dominated the low-stakes daily tournaments for years.
"JBex," however, didn't spend much of the day atop the chip counts. Soheb Porbandarwala, who at one point had a 2:1 chip lead over the second biggest stack, led for most of the day. He bagged one of the largest stacks, but fell off a bit late in the session, which ended with just 16 players left.
Day 4 kicked off with 64 remaining players out of the 1,865 entrants, including Poker Hall of Famer John Hennigan, who was among the biggest stacks. "Johnny World," however," didn't have a banner day of poker and was eliminated in 46th place for $71,000. He joined Asher Conniff (60th for $50,000), Ian Matakis (48th place for $59,000), and Eugene Katchalov (43rd place for $71,000) among those who failed to bag chips.
Payjumps are Getting Serious
Those still standing, when play resumes on Friday, will have the added pressure of massive payjumps on the horizon. Each player left in the field has a guaranteed minimum payout of $145,000, and a maximum cash of $2,528,200. Reaching the final table of six is worth at least $540,000.
Porbandarwala ended play with 18,975,000 chips, good for third place. He would have finished with the chip lead if not for losing a late race against Konstantin Held, who finished with 6,500,000.
Becker, who entered the session ninth in chips, hung around the top 10 for a large chunk of Thursday's session. He then made a late push to surpass Porbandarwala with his 24,300,000-chip stack. Jeremy Brown isn't far off that pace with 21,350,000 chips.
Becker became well-known within the poker community in 2023 when he won eight tournaments at Wynn in a month. The Las Vegas low-stakes daily tournament G.O.A.T. could get his biggest win in his home casino on Sunday at the final table, if he makes it that far.
The competition won't be easy for Becker, or any of the players, on Day 5. There are still plenty of skilled pros left in the field, including Porbandarwala, a WPT Champions Club member who won the WPT Online Poker Open in Dec. 2020. Other notables left include Maxx Coleman (12,500,000), Hustler Casino Live player Linglin Zeng (7,500,000), and WPT Champions Club member Jared Jaffee (6,250,000), who was down to just 12 big blinds late but was able to find a double-up before bagging.
Zeng, on the World Poker Tour YouTube livestream, pulled off a strong semi-bluff just before Day 5 concluded against Chad Lipton's top pair. Had the bluff failed, she would have been down to just a few big blinds, and perhaps would have busted before the end of the day.
The Day 5 livestream begins at 12:30 p.m. PT, and the session won't finish until a final table of six has been achieved.
*Images courtesy of the World Poker Tour.
