Day 3 Concludes, Dan Kelly in Control

It was a relatively brief Day 3 here at the $25,000 NLHE six-max event. 18 players returned to play down to a final table of six, and within the first level we lost an entire table of players. By the time were down to eight, we'd lost former big stacks Daniel Negreanu, Abe Mosseri, and Isaac Haxton, along with the man who came into the day with a dominating chip lead, Bryn Kenney.

The story of the day, however, was that of the rise of Dan Kelly. Best known as "djk123" online, the 21 year-old came into Day 3 with only 260,000 in chips, making him the shortest stack among the final 18 players. Kelly found an early double-up and just kept on swinging, three-betting and check-raising his way to the 5,895,000 he just bagged up. With just over 14.3 million spread around the table, Kelly controls more than 41% of the chips in play.

The oldest player remaining in this event by more than a decade and a half, Frank Kassela, also made a surge today and is making a serious run at his third bracelet. Kassela is second in chips with 2.6 million and now has a stranglehold on the WSOP Player of the Year race. Guaranteed at least sixth place, Kassela is now 45 points ahead of John Juanda, and a win in this event would make it extremely difficult for anyone to catch him for the title.

Join us again tomorrow at 2:30 pm as we play down to a winner. The action will also be streamed live on ESPN3.

For all of us at PokerNews, thanks for joining us. Good night and good luck from Las Vegas.