2010-11 World Series of Poker Circuit - Harrah's New Orleans

Main Event
Day: 3
Event Info

2010-11 World Series of Poker Circuit - Harrah's New Orleans

Final Results
Winner
Winning Hand
88
Prize
$121,017
Event Info
Buy-in
$1,500
Prize Pool
$550,060
Entries
382
Level Info
Level
30
Blinds
50,000 / 75,000
Ante
15,000

The Run to the Ring

Todd Wood
Todd Wood

Welcome back to Harrah's New Orleans for the culmination of the $1,600 Main Event. Ten players survived Day 2 -- one more than expected -- when the stalemate poker game was suspended around 2:00 A.M.

Courtesy of a few monster pots, Todd Wood will wield the big stack today with about 54 big blinds in the bag. He's a local boy, a 42-year-old lexicographer (yep, he edits and evaluates dictionaries for a living) who finished as the runner-up in his only other Circuit event he's ever played.

Here's how the rest of the table stacks up:

SeatPlayerChips
1Lance Craig694,000
2Josh Evans1,159,000
3Matt Waxman460,000
4Bobby Toye882,000
5Jonathan Poche656,000
6Jake Bazeley983,000
7Todd Wood1,619,000
8Billie Payne307,000
9Scott Zakheim491,000
10James McBride395,000

A couple of those names are familiar to those who've been following the Circuit this season. Matt Waxman won a Main Event gold ring in Atlantic City, and there are a few players on the points bubble rooting for him to repeat here today. A win in this event would put Waxman very close to $1 million in career tournament earnings.

A couple seats to Waxman's left will sit Jake Bazeley, a young pro who has been best known as "Bazeman" crushing the online tables. He's won more than $2.5 million online, and he's cashed in about half of the WSOP-C events he's played in his short career. He's also got a few decent live scores, but he's yet to taste tournament victory in a brick-and-mortar. He begins the day in third place with just shy of a million chips.

Apart from those guys, we have a 42-year-old "man of leisure" from Texas (Lance Craig), the 76th-place finisher in the 2007 Main Event (Josh Evans), another former ring winner and the hometown favorite (Bobby Toye), a first-time final tablist (Jonathan Poche), a plumber also from Texas (Billie Payne), a New-York-turned-Florida attorney (Scott Zakheim), and a retiree from Slidell (Jim McBride). It's gonna be a good one.

Play begins in just a few minutes, so don't wander away. The table for ten is set!