At the start of the day, 229 players were hoping that they would be the next gold bracelet winner at the 2013 World Series of Poker. After ten levels of poker on Day 2, only 22 remain, and the player who is at the front of the pack is Niall Farrell, who bagged up 792,000 chips to end the night. Right behind him is Micahel Rocco, who has 780,000.
Half of the starting 229 today were going to walk away empty handed, and some of the notables who were part of the lesser half today included Ryan D’Angelo, Matthias de Meulder, Jonathan Duhamel, Sam Stein, and Dan Kelly, who came into the day second in chips.
Some of the notables who survived the bubble, but fell short of making Day 3 included Randy Lew (113th), Dominik Nitsche (104th), Sorel Mizzi (90th), Bart Hanson (88th), Mark Radoja (49th), Joe Kuether (34th), and Matt Marafioti (23rd), who was eliminated on one of the last hands of the night.
Jason Mercier has made his first Day 3 of the 2013 WSOP, as he will be coming back with 566,000. Other notables joining him tomorrow are Will Jaffe (425,000), Nam Le (327,000), Justin Zaki (221,000), Pedro Rios (186,000), and Marco Johnson (124,000).
The final 22 players will be coming back tomorrow at 1 PM to play down to a winner. Be sure to come back to PokerNews.com for all of your live updates, including hand-for-hand coverage of the final table!
The last person to be eliminated tonight was Matt Marafioti. Evan Schwartz raised it up to 18,000, and Marafioti moved all in for 150,000. Schwartz was in the tank for over a minute, and about midway through, Marafioti said "I will show you I don't know if we're flipping or not but I am scared." Eventually, Schwartz made the call.
Marafioti:
Schwartz:
Marafioti flopped top pair, as it came down , but the on the turn changed things. The river gave Schwartz two pair, the , and Marafioti made his way to the payout desk just short of the end of the night.
The eliminations just keep coming from these final three tables as the night wraps up. In the latest one, Danny Warchol got his money in preflop holding . He was up against the of Jacob Schindler, and the flop brought plenty of action, coming . Warchol flopped top two pair, but he would still need to dodge a heart to survive. He did that on the turn, the , but the on the river gave Schindler the nuts, and sent Warchol packing just before the end of the night.
Tyler Cornell was down to his last 100,000 after he doubled up Jason Mercier, and the last of it went in the middle preflop, when he had . He was up against the of Jeff Tims, and the board ran down , knocking out Cornell is 25th.
Ryan Welch got the last of his chips into the middle preflop with , and he was up against the of Mark Teltscher. The flop was great for Welch, coming . However, the turn was a disaster, as one of the only cards that could help Teltscher, the , came. Welch could still win with a spade or if the board paired, but the river was the .
After winning that hand, Teltscher is now up to 770,000.
There were a flurry of double ups in the past few minutes, and during one of them, we missed the elimination of Konstantin Tolokno. We asked Niall Farrell how it happened, and he was able to fill us in on the details.
According to him, Tolokno shoved all in from middle position holding , and Sandeep Pulusani made the call from the big blind with . Pulusani flopped a flush draw, and turned an ace to win the hand, making Tolokno the first player eliminated from the final three tables.
If I ask you who Ian Simpson is, chance are his name probably won't ring a bell. Simpson has amassed over $500,000 in live tournament earnings, but all of them have come in events abroad. However, if you ask someone over in the United Kingdom who he is, you will likely get a long story of all the success he has enjoyed over there.
Simpson burst onto the scene in 2012 when he final tabled the biggest event in Ireland, the Irish Poker Open. He finished 4th at that final table for $141,623. He enjoyed some moderate tournament success the rest of the year, but never came close to matching that score, until 2013. Earlier this year, he just so happened to final table the Irish Poker Open Main Event...again. This time around, he topped his fourth place finish by winning the event for $339,604. But that wasn't the only highlight of the day.
Mere seconds after winning the event, he pulled his long time girlfriend Emma towards the table, and got down on one knee to purpose. She said yes, tying up a perfect day the likes of which have rarely been seen. Well now Simpson has come out to Las Vegas, hoping to make a name for himself in the biggest poker city in all of the world, and he's well on his way to securing his first WSOP cash with an above average stack as we approach the money today. The question is, if he does find a way to win this event, what we will he do to top his last big win celebration?
1,072 players walked through the doors of the Rio yesterday to play in Event #44 $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em. 229 of them remain, but only half of those, 117 to be exact, will make the money. Two players separated themselves from the pack yesterday: Zohair Karim (128,700), and none other then Dan "djk123" Kelly (113,700), who is looking for his ninth cash of the summer, continuing one of the sickest heaters we have seen in recent memory.
These two will be joined by a plethora of other notables, including Jonathan Duhamel (65,700), Jason Mercier (65,100), Joe Cada (58,900), Scott Clements (48,000), and Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi (34,700), amongst many others.
The cards will be in the air again at 1 PM local time, which is just an hour away. We here at PokerNews.com will have all your action as always, ad we will play through the money and a full ten more levels of play. You won't want to miss the action, so don't go anywhere! In the meantime, enjoy Lynn Gilmartin's nightly recap, as she catches you up on everything that happened at the Rio yesterday!
, but the 
on the turn changed things. The river gave Schwartz two pair, the 
, and Marafioti made his way to the payout desk just short of the end of the night.
. He was up against the 
of Jacob Schindler, and the flop brought plenty of action, coming 
, but the 
on the river gave Schindler the nuts, and sent Warchol packing just before the end of the night.
. He was up against the 
of Jeff Tims, and the board ran down 
, knocking out Cornell is 25th.
. However, the turn was a disaster, as one of the only cards that could help Teltscher, the 
, came. Welch could still win with a spade or if the board paired, but the river was the 
.
. Pulusani flopped a flush draw, and turned an ace to win the hand, making Tolokno the first player eliminated from the final three tables.
