Faraz Jaka leads WPT Championship with 18 players left
Thursday, 22 April 2010
The money bubble has burst at the WPT Championship with 18 players still chasing the $1.5m first prize.
Faraz Jaka leads the way going into Day 5 but he owes his big lead to one of the sickest beats seen in a long time. Jaka, known online as “The Toilet” five-bet, yes you read that right he five-bet with that monstrous hand 9s-3d. Heather Sue Mercer snap called the shove and showed pocket aces.
Needless to say the board came out 9c-8d-3s-5h-10c giving Jaka two pair and sending Mercer to the rail bemoaning her dreadful luck. “The Toilet” finished the day with 3.117m chips over 750,000 ahead of closest rival David Benyamine.
There are plenty of big names still in the hunt for a big pay day too with David Williams, Phil Hellmuth, Scotty Nguyen, Eric Baldwin and Jason Lester still in the hunt. It's chip and a chair territory for Tony Cousineau though who will return later today with just three big blinds.
Carlos Mortensen headed the list of high profile casualties who busted out just before the money bubble. Joining him on the rail were Devilfish and defending champion Yevgeniy Timoshenko.
All 18 remaining players are guaranteed a pay day of at least $47,500 but they'll have eyes on the first prize of $1.53m.
The remaining chip counts are as follows:
1 Faraz Jaka 3,117,000
2 David Benyamine 2,350,000
3 David Williams 2,072,000
4 Billy Baxter 1,630,000
5 Nikolay Evdakov 1,426,000
6 Phil Hellmuth 1,377,000
7 Shawn Buchanan 1,224,000
8 Olivier Busquet 1,088,000
9 Scotty Nguyen 941,000
10 Eric Baldwin 880,000
11 J.J. Liu 674,000
12 Robert Cooper 662,000
13 John O’Shea 495,000
14 Cliff Josephy 458,000
15 Jason Lester 421,000
16 Josh Arieh 303,000
17 Matt Stout 274,000
18 Tony Cousineau 60,000
Image courtesy of WPT.