button in SafariBenny Glaser Leads The Way With 15 Remaining in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship
Stud Games: 15,000 Ante, 20,000 Bring-In, 50,000 Completion, 50,000-100,000 Limits
Pot-Limit & No-Limit: 25,000/35,000 Ante, 10,000-25,000 Blinds
The annual Main Event for mixed games aficionados is one step closer to crowning a champion, and 15 players out of a field of 108 entries remain in contention at the end of Day 3 for Event #60: $50,000 Poker Players Championship. All of them have already secured a six-figure cash prize for their efforts but the largest slices of the $5,130,000 overall prize pool will still be up for grabs in the following two days at the World Series of Poker, hosted by Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas.
Widely considered as one of the most talented and versatile mixed games player in the world, the UK's Benny Glaser leaped from second place on Day 2 to the top of the leaderboard with a stack of 4,705,000, and has his eyes firmly set on WSOP gold bracelet number nine. It will, however, certainly not be an easy path to victory, as Glaser faces several top pros in the nine different poker variants.
Paul Volpe is second in chips with 4,020,000, and Kristopher Tong follows in third place with 3,305,000. The incredibly stacked field also includes Josh Arieh (2,640,000), Phil Ivey (2,555,000), and Jason Mercier (2,180,000) in the overnight top ten, whereas Phil Hellmuth has retained his chances of a record-extending 18th gold bracelet, albeit with a shorter stack of 545,000,.
Top 10 Chip Counts After Day 3
| Rank | Player | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Benny Glaser | United Kingdom | 4,705,000 |
| 2 | Paul Volpe | United States | 4,020,000 |
| 3 | Kristopher Tong | United States | 3,305,000 |
| 4 | Nick Guagenti | United States | 2,850,000 |
| 5 | Josh Arieh | United States | 2,640,000 |
| 6 | Phil Ivey | United States | 2,555,000 |
| 7 | Alex Livingston | Canada | 2,530,000 |
| 8 | Jason Mercier | United States | 2,180,000 |
| 9 | Maxx Coleman | United States | 1,780,000 |
| 10 | Chris Brewer | United States | 1,565,000 |
Action of the Day
Only 39 players out of the 108-entry strong field returned to their seats on the feature stage area, and the first level brought a mere three casualties. Yuri Dzivielevski was the first to go, before David “ODB” Baker saw his stack vanish within three hands, all of which involved Robert Wells. Right after that, Jared Bleznick hit the rail, and the final five tables were set when James Tilton bowed out in a Razz hand against Maksim Pisarenko.
The action accelerated until the dinner break and the field was whittled down to only 24 hopefuls. John Racener was among those to exit when his flopped top pair in Pot-Limit Omaha was drawing very slim on the turn. Carlo van Ravenswoud had his pocket aces cracked by the trips nines of Tong in No-Limit Hold'em, and Roy Thung then struck gold to bust Alexander Kostritsyn as well as Marco Johnson. The elimination of the latter was most certainly cruel when his inferior two pair in Seven Card Stud was cracked by runner runner quads.
Brian Tate ran into the pocket aces of Maksim Pisarenko, while the rollercoaster ride of Gus Hansen ended in the final hand before dinner when Thung's nine-seven in No Limit 2-7 Single Draw beat his ten. Within the next level, another four players saw their hopes vanish, including Luke Schwartz, Ray Dehkharghani, Christopher Vitch and Eric Wasserson. For the latter, the flopped wheel of Thung reduced his stack to rubble, and Wasserson was then eliminated by Ivey in the first hand of Razz thereafter.
The only former champion in the field was fighting a short stack for extended periods. Brian Rast ultimately bowed out just shy of the money. In a Pot Limit Omaha hand he was dominated by Glaser and found no escape. With the majority of the penultimate level of the night still to be played, the action went hand-for-hand on unbalanced tables two away from a six-figure min-cash and, in the following 37 hands, only one player was eliminated.
Wells found himself near the bottom of the leaderboard and got his chips in with rolled up sixes in Seven Card Stud during three-way action. Volpe started with three spades and instead improved on every street thereafter to make eights full of jacks, knocking out the WSOP bracelet winner from Wales before the money.
After 47 hands since the hand-for-hand procedure went underway, the bubble then burst. Three-time WSOP bracelet winner Bryce Yockey had previously lost almost his entire stack and was then forced all-in from the big blind in PLO. Nick Guagenti made jacks full on the river and that left Yockey as the last casualty without any cash prize.
Dara Taherpour collected the min-cash of $100,934 and he was followed to the rail by Matt Glantz, who earned $102,474 for his efforts.
With half of the final level left, the action was stopped for the night and the remaining 15 players will return to their exact same seats at 1 p.m. local time for the penultimate tournament day.
Remaining Payouts
| Place | Prize | Place | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $1,343,764 | 7 | $176,732 |
| 2 | $895,837 | 8-9 | $144,054 |
| 3 | $600,698 | 10-11 | $122,709 |
| 4 | $417,607 | 12-14 | $109,459 |
| 5 | $301,405 | 15 | $102,474 |
| 6 | $226,172 |
Stay tuned right here on PokerNews for continued coverage of the $50,000 Poker Players Championship en route to crowning a new champion in the following two days until June 25, 2026.