Day 3 of the $3,500 World Poker Tour Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open Championship returned 90 players to action and Monday’s action cut the field to 16 remaining players. Darryll Fish leads the field after bagging up 8.65 million and had to be convinced of it.
“Me? No, I’m not – I might be close,” Fish said after spending the early part of the day short and then middle of the pack around the dinner break. It wasn’t until he knocked out Adam Hendrix in 18th place that he nabbed the lead, five minutes from ending Day 3.
“I’m going to go home and wake my girlfriend,” Fish said after bagging. “Sleep, then wake up and do this all over again.”
Matthew Beinner leads the chase pack with 8 million followed by Iulian Blebea (7.25 million) and Eugene Kotlyarevskiy (6.9 million). Drew O’Connell, Francis Anderson and Landon Tice return in the middle of the field.
Alexandre Reard survived a couple of tough beats after being chip leader for a while but returns near the bottom of the counts with Matthew Wantman and Roman Korenev.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m first or second tonight, it only matters at the end,” Beinner said. “I feel good, but my sleep has been pretty poor recently. My family is coming tomorrow – I’m really excited. It’s going to be great. Regardless, I’m a winner, so I can’t complain.”
Ren Lin: Close to a 'chip and a chair' story
Ren Lin was cut down to a single big blind early in the day and spun it up to make a huge impact on the tournament. His good-natured eccentricity was doubled up by calling himself, 'a professional short stack player.'
Lin played his way back into the top five or six chip stacks. His luck finally ran out when he ran his pocket sevens into Benjamin Jones’ pocket kings. He didn’t improve and was eliminated in 22nd place.
Tanupat Punjarojanakul cashed in his fourth WPT event in 2024 after only playing tournaments seriously since 2021. He worked some short stack magic to finish in 58th place.
Jeremy Becker (90th), Chad Roedersheimer (81st), Jason Mercier (61st), Stephen Song (45th), Christian Harder (33rd), Jesse Lonis (29th) and Hendrix (18th) all made Day 3 cashes but didn’t advance through the day.
2014 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Martin Jacobson was eliminated late in the day on Sunday. He revealed to PokerOrg that his playing days are numbered and he’s lacking the proper motivation lately.
Tuesday’s action is scheduled for cards to hit the air at noon, and they’ll play down to a final table of six players. Wednesday’s final table kicks off at 1pm. Each player has $39,000 locked up, and Day 4 payouts top out at $108,000 for 7th place.
Top 5 chip stacks
| Rank | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Darryll Fish | 8,650,000 |
| 2 | Matthew Beinner | 8,000,000 |
| 3 | Iulian Blebea | 7,250,000 |
| 4 | Eugene Kotlyarevskiy | 6,900,000 |
| 5 | Dylan Smith | 4,725,000 |
All photos are courtesy of the World Poker Tour - Images by Drew Amato.
