Day 4 was a big day for the WPT World Championship and it ended with just 45 players, everyone guaranteed a six-figure score, and plenty of big names still left hunting the $5,678,000 top prize.
Naj Ajez led the way at the start after winning a monster pot right at the end of Day 3. Artur Martirosyan was second in chips and that stack ended up stopping him playing in the $1 million Big One for One Drop.
Princess Love, with over 3.8 million followers on Instagram, was starting to make waves. She built a stack up to six million, which we think is worthy of Ray J's attention. Love is a recent convert to tournament poker, and already has 13 cashes this year. The last was her biggest: $80,156 at the StormX Invitational III in October. She needed to finish 64th or better to beat that.
Moorman slips on big slick
Chris Moorman mounted a big charge towards the chip lead, eliminating fellow ACR pro BetOnDrew in the process. He then picked up A-K twice and didn't win with either run-outs. The first didn't do any damage to his 14 million stack as two big slicks ended up chopping it. The second was catastrophic.
The hand started with a raise to 275,000 from the cut-off. The button three-bet to 825,000 before Moorman slid out a four-bet to 2,050,000. Action moved to Maxime Chilaud in the big blind (the same Maxime who lost the big flip to Ajez late last night) and he moved all-in for 7.3 million. That elicited two folds before Moorman checked his cards, shrugged, sighed and called. His A-K was in big trouble against Chilaud's kings and there was no ace on the 6-8-J-6-9 board. That was a 15.7 million pot and would have catapulted Moorman into a huge chip lead. Instead, it cut him down to 7.3 million.
Ajez on the wrong end of a cooler
The next defining hand of the day involved Ajez, shortly after. He raised to 225,000 on the button, only to see Benjamin Jacobs pop it to 775,000. Ajez four-bet to a straight two million before Jacobs moved all-in. Ajez made the call to see Jacobs wasn't making a move and had the goods – aces to his queens.
The 5-T-Q flop was a disaster for Jacobs but the ace on the turn left him celebrating, and the table in a state of shock. The river didn't give Ajez the one-outer he was looking for and it catapulted Jacobs into the chip lead.
At the end of Level 24, there were 57 players left with one level left to play. Davidi Kitai, Joe Cada and WPT founder Lyle Berman had been eliminated. Kristen and Alex Foxen were both still in with average stacks.
Princess Love had beat her previous best cash with everyone now guaranteed $80,700.
And then there were 45
Kristen Foxen was starting to get low. Her stack had dwindled to around 2.7 million when she found a big double up to get her right back to an average stack.
She got it in with jacks vs nines but this wasn't going to be as straightforward as it sounds. Her opponent hit his set on the flop and Foxen had to wait until the river to do the same.
Mark Mounsey leads the way
The world got treated to a fantastic close to the day with both Foxens and Princess Love sat next to each other on the feature table. Unfortunately, Jack Salter fell late, running A-Q into aces. However, there are still lots of big names and even bigger narratives ready to spin things up on Day 5.
The end of day chip leader is someone you probably won't have heard of, but he's the chillest of dudes.
Mark Mounsey rounded off the last level of the day by knocking out Igor Kurganov in 48th place, his A-K dominating and holding against Kurganov's A-J. He ended with 18,725,000, good for almost 100 big blinds.
Mounsey's biggest live cash is $3,396 and he's obliterated that already. With 45 players left, everyone is guaranteed six figures now – $111,300. That's already a pretty good payday, but remember there's $5,678,000 up top and the top six will get seven figures. We grabbed Mounsey for a chat after he bagged for the night.
Here are the the players who joined Mounsey at the top of the chip stacks:
- Mark Mounsey: 18,725,000
- Maxime Chilaud: 17,900,000
- Ren Lin: 17,750,000
- Raphael Blouet: 17,450,000
- Ben Heath: 16,600,000
- Ben Jacobs: 16,425,000
- Naj Ajez: 14,600,000
- Noel Rodriguez: 13,925,000
- Mario Navarro: 12,225,000
- Alex Jauregui: 12,075,000
- Artur Martirosyan: 11,250,000
- Andrew Lichtenberger: 11,100,000
- Kristen Foxen: 10,300,000
- Chris Moorman: 10,200,000
- Tjan Tepeh: 9,475,000
If you thought today was big, there's even more action tomorrow, including the final table of the Prime Championship. That's going to dominate the live stream. Day 5 of the World Championship will see the players down to the final few tables, while Day 2 of the Big One for One Drop will also play out. That's a ridiculously stacked day of poker and we're at Wynn Las Vegas for all of it. Join us tomorrow, with the action starting at midday on PokerOrg Instant.
You can find the full table draw for Day 5 of the World Championship on the WPT site
