Hendrix, Auer and Qartomy Pace Final 34 in Wynn Main Event
The final 34 contenders have emerged in the Wynn Spring Classic $3,500 Championship, and three players have paced well ahead of the others to position themselves for the best chance at the $391K first-place prize.
Tops in the counts is Adam Hendrix, who looked destined to lap the rest of the field after an incredibly hot start to the day. Hendrix began his rampage a few levels in versus fellow big stack Ben Underwood, when Hendrix made a huge call for stacks with a weak full house — trips were on the board — and was shown a bluff. He then cracked the aces of Matt Bond with a set of eights and was off to the races with 350 big blinds.
Second place is Matthias Auer, who looked set to bag a merely very good stack until the final level of the day, when he got aces over the tens of Qing Liu blind versus blind for a heap to double past 2 million.
Finally, there's Ray Qartomy. The boisterous regular picked up his momentum late as well, gambling with a combo draw on the turn for most of his stack and hitting then having kings hold in a three-way all in that busted high roller star Sergi Reixach and Ryan Remington.
Those three hold a combined 6 million of the 24 million in play with only 300,000 total separating Hendrix from Qartomy.
Others making it through to Day 3 included Chino Rheem, Jeremy Ausmus, Ankush Mandavia, Eric Afriat, Sean Winter and Chris Moorman. They'll be set for a long final day on Monday.
About 200 players — counting late registrations during the first two levels — were in action total, which pushed the prize pool to just shy of $2 million from 614 entries. Some of those getting a slice of that with top-63 finishes were Upeshka De Silva, Matt Stout, Nick Pupillo, Seungmook Jung and recent WPT runner-up Tuan Phan.
Play resumes Monday at noon, so come back to PokerNews then to see who grabs the monster prize awaiting the winner.
. Sergi Reixach had 
and Ryan Remington 
.
was even better for Qartomy. The 
kept everyone live, but the 
river was the blank Qartomy desired.
and Moorman collected about 190,000 from each opponent. Balzano had about 250,000 beyond that and sent it all to Liu with a shake of the head.
flop but the 
flop. Matt Bond bet 6,000 in the hijack, Hendrix made it 20,000, and Bond came back with 52,000. Hendrix peeled for the 
turn and he check-called 73,000 more. On the 
river, Hendrix checked. Bond took some time then told the dealer he was all in.
to collect Bond's last 230,000 or so, with Bond showing 
. McKeehen slowed down with a check and Ausmus bet 35,000. McKeehen called, bringing the 
river. He checked and Ausmus jammed except one T500 chip. It was 103,500 and McKeehen called fairly quickly.
. Ausmus checked from under the gun, McKeehen bet 8,000, and Ausmus made it 23,000. McKeehen called. On the 
.
and took the former WSOP champ's remaining stack.
but was no good against Winter's 
