Day 4 of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event began with tension in the air. The previous day’s play had ended with 1,476 players remaining of the 9,735 original entries. The trouble was, only 1,461 of them would get paid.
That left us 15 spots shy of the money. A soft bubble with which to start the day; a tense, cagey stage, too soon for hand-for-hand play but not too late for many to start stalling for their tournament lives. $15,000 isn’t chicken-feed, and that’s the minimum that would await those who survived the bubble. For everyone else, they’d just get a ‘GG’ and a lonely walk to the nearest bar.
Actually, that wasn’t strictly the case for everyone else. On the day that the WSOP revealed details of this winter’s WSOP Paradise festival — complete with a record-breaking $60M guarantee for the $25K Super Main Event — it also revealed that the player busting on the money bubble of this year’s Main Event would receive a $30K package to play the upcoming tournament in The Bahamas.
That meant the player finishing in 1,462nd place would technically win more than the person finishing in 603rd — an irony not lost on many after the ClubWPT Gold debacle earlier in the series. More controversy, just what we needed.
It would take some time, lots of stalling (and plenty of complaining about stalling), but eventually the field hit 1,466 and hand-for-hand play began, five eliminations from the bubble. Two players bust in the first two hands, and two more bit the dust on hand number four, to leave the tournament on the stone bubble. On the next hand, three players went: Mathew Frankland, Marco Dickner, and Sachin Joshi.
They chopped the 2x $15K payouts between the three of them, and flipped for the Paradise package. The UK’s Mathew Frankland won that, and will be hoping to survive the bubble in The Bahamas come December. And speaking of the UK…
The British invasion?
Outside of the poker rooms, everywhere you go on the Las Vegas Strip there is music playing. The casino floors, the restaurants, shopping malls, bars, swimming pools and the streets themselves are wired for sound. And the majority of the tunes seem to be British.
Yes, you’ll hear The Eagles, Skynyrd and Guns ‘N Roses, but at any given moment you’re just as likely to hear the Stones, The Cure, George Michael or Dua Lipa. Does Las Vegas simply enjoy hearing the constant hum of British voices?
That very much depends on who you ask, and if one were to canvas the opinion of those sharing table time with Will Kassouf on Day 4 of the WSOP Main Event, you might get some strong opinions.
It’s been almost a decade since Kassouf made his deep run in the 2016 WSOP Main Event, chattering his way to the title of ‘King of Speech Play’, if not the title of poker champion. As viewers of the Day 3 livestream will attest, Kassouf is very much back and firing in this year’s WSOP.
After all the attention demanded by Martin Kabrhel this series, Kassouf’s non-stop verbals seem somewhat on-trend for what we might, if not a year too late, term a ‘brat summer’.
Kassouf was an hour late for the start of play on Wednesday’s Day 4, but continues to survive and thrive. We caught up with him for a quick chat — which lasted the best part of an hour. The man has things to say.
When Day 4 came to a close, 522 of the 1,476 who started out were still in, including Kassouf with around 2.5M chips. The WSOP’s official chipcounts show Harold Lam out in front with 4.2M, while those closing in on the top spot include Josh Reichard (3M), Eric Afriat (2.7M), Romain Locquet (2.5M), Greg Merson (2.3M), Michael Mizrachi (2.3M), Stephen Chidwick (1.9M) and Isaac Haxton (1.9M).
Cards will be in the air for Day 5 at noon on Thursday.
Last $50K event of the summer gets rolling
Beyond the borders of the Main Event, the $50,000 High Roller NLH event got started, with 194 entries and 78 making it through to Day 2. Registration will remain open for a few levels into Thursday’s play, and your $50K will get you a starting stack of 300K chips, good for around 19 big blinds. Just be aware of when the action’s on you, or you may find yourself accidentally timing out, then tilting off.
Japan’s Masashi Oya leads the overnight chip counts with 2M, while other notables include Martin Kabrhel (4th, 1.5M), Kristen Foxen (26th, 850K), Chris Brewer (29th, 780K), Alex Foxen (34th, 740K) and Daniel Negreanu (50th, 530K).
That ends on Friday, but one event that ended on Wednesday was the $600 NLH Ultra Stack, with Justin Fawcett winning a first WSOP bracelet and $355,110, for a return on his investment of almost 600x.
