Massoud Eskandari Still Alive For a Repeat as 109 Players Remain on Day 3 of $1,000 Super Seniors
The sea of players and tables that crowded the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas at the start of Event #61: $1,000 Super Seniors No-Limit Hold’em makes any hope of winning the tournament seem nothing more than a distant fantasy.
Massoud Eskandari knows what it’s like to overcome those long odds. He beat out a field of 2,668 to win this event during the 2022 World Series of Poker. Fast forward a year later, and the Los Angeles pro has a chance to achieve the near-impossible: do it all over again.
Just 108 opponents stand in the way of Eskandari and a repeat as champion when Day 3 begins at 10 a.m. local time. Eskandari takes an above-average stack of 825,000 into the penultimate day of the 60+ championship as he tries to do what James Moore did in 2016-17 and win this event for a second straight year.
He’ll have to chase down chip leader Farhad Davoudzadeh. The scientist from Palmdale, California is taking a massive stack of 2,400,000 into Day 3, nearly 800,000 more than his closest challenger. Davoudzadeh is no stranger to navigating through massive fields. He made the final table of the Colossus in 2016 and the Crazy Eights in 2021.
Day 3 Top Ten Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Farhad Davoudzadeh | Iran | 2,400,000 | 120 |
| 2 | Jeanclaude Perrot | United States | 1,615,000 | 81 |
| 3 | Mark Gerecke | United States | 1,600,000 | 80 |
| 4 | Ronald Lane | United States | 1,525,000 | 76 |
| 5 | Federico Trujillo | Argentina | 1,425,000 | 71 |
| 6 | Rassoul Malboubi | United States | 1,310,000 | 66 |
| 7 | Brendan Byrne | Ireland | 1,285,000 | 64 |
| 8 | Scott Laird | United States | 1,190,000 | 60 |
| 9 | Andreas Boelling | Germany | 1,167,000 | 58 |
| 10 | Craig Jones | United States | 1,145,000 | 57 |
Jean-Claude Perrot (1,615,000), Mark Gerecke (1,600,000), Ronald Lane (1,525,000), and Federico Trujillo (1,425,000) round out the top five. Bracelet winners Kevin Song (755,000) and Farzad Bonyadi (270,000), whose mother won this event in 2018, are also still alive in the hunt for the bracelet, as are Curt Kohlberg (260,000), Lee Markholt (175,000), and 1999 Main Event runner-up Alan Goehring (85,000).
Day 3 begins with just 109 players remaining out of a once-massive starting field of 3,121, smashing the tournament record and building a total prize pool of $2,777,690. All remaining players are in the money and guaranteed at least $2,931.
The action picks up on Level 21 at 10,000/20,000 and a 20,000 big blind ante. With the average stack being worth less than 30 big blinds at the start of the day, the pace should be quick at the beginning.
The plan on Day 3 is to narrow the field down to the final table and beyond, until there are just five players remaining. The event will then be streamed by PokerGO on Friday until a champion is crowned.
Eskandari did it last year. He can do it again this year or have one of his opponents take the title away from him. PokerNews will be following this battle all day long and providing live updates as the field heads down to a final table.