WPT Seminole Rock N Roll Open: Istvan Briski leads final 15 to Day 4

Paul Oresteen
Posted on: November 27, 2023 12:31 PST

Day 3 of the World Poker Tour Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open returned 83 players to the felt. The early action was a blood bath for high profile players and the field was trimmed to 15 remaining players after a double elimination at the end of the night. Istvan Briski leads the field to the penultimate day of play after bagging up 11.8 million.

Local Mixed Game player Sandy Sanchez might have the best ROI going in the room as he satellited in for $400 and finished near the top of the counts. “I didn’t have any real tough decisions, just a lot of good hands,” he said. “I didn’t have to really do much; I just made a lot of big hands basically.”

Rayan Chamas, Matt Bond, Fred Goldberg and Darryll Fish all return for Day 4 on Tuesday to play for a seat at the final table.

Rough start for notables

Brian Altman (72nd), Chance Kornuth (69th), Adam Hendrix (64th), Alex Foxen (59th), Heng Zhang (56th), Andrew Moreno (55th), Alex Livingston (49th), Anthony Zinno (47th), Kyle Julius (28th) and Chad Eveslage (19th) were all eliminated throughout the day.

WPT Seminole Rock n Roll Poker Open Season 2023
Joe Giron/www.pokerphotoarchive.

Foxen participated in the “Inside look at outside the box numbers” and tracked every hand dealt to him this event. He was pitched 258 hands on Day 1B, 198 hands on Day 2 and 27 hands on Day 3 before he was eliminated.

Deeper dive into Day 4 players

The exploding Texas poker ecosystem boosted Bond’s game to the next level. He returned second in chips for Day 3 and heads into Day 3 brimming with confidence.

Goldberg most notably bubbled the 2006 WSOP Main Event final table and since then he’s steadily put results for nearly 20 years. His deep run could be his first WPT final table in ten years.

Darryll Fish goes by his own flow and is comfortably playing in his home casino. He’s looking to add another final table run to his resume and then he’s off to run his Miami Mushroom Fest.

Nathan DeLand made poker history as the first left-handed dealer at the WSOP Main Event final table. He started off dealing in underground card rooms and in a few short years is a leading tournament supervisor on the poker circuit.

Looking ahead

The remaining players have $38,300 locked up already and six-figure payouts start at 7th place. The final tablists earn at least $157,800 and the winner earns $752,500 plus a seat to the WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas.

Tuesday’s action calls for the field to play down to a TV-ready final table of six players with a noon start. The final table is to be live streamed on a delay with Matt Savage and LearnWPT CEO Adrian Naggy in the commentary booth.

Day 3 EOD Chip Counts

  1. Istvan Briski – 11,875,000
  2. Sandy Sanchez – 9,575,000
  3. Rayan Chamas – 7,925,000
  4. Matt Bond – 7,575,000
  5. Alejandro Olaechea – 7,515,000
  6. Fred Goldberg – 3,750,000
  7. Darryll Fish – 3,650,000
  8. Gergely Kulcsar – 3,550,000
  9. Niko Koop – 3,475,000
  10. Jason Sagle – 3,025,000
  11. Viktor Kovachev – 2,675,000
  12. Rishi Makkar – 2,450,000
  13. Lucian Silveira – 2,325,000
  14. John McDonald – 2,300,000
  15. Luke Graham – 825,000

Images courtesy of WPT