And they're off! WSOPE Day 3 is underway.

And they're off! WSOPE Day 3 is underway.

Sunday, 26 September 2010

We began with 346 players stumping up £10,000 and now we are down to less than a fifth of that field; 66 players are returning today to – they hope – make the money and the last three tables. We’re scheduled for six levels of play but the magic number is 27 remaining players which, judging from yesterday’s 129 casualties, may not take too long.

The layout is very different now, with the centre stage hosting the feature table and cameras being set up and tested. The screens behind the main stage are playing footage of last year’s final table – motivation for Daniel Negreanu who will be looking for a third WSOPE final table in a row. The area to the left where, yesterday, Phil Ivey built his stack is now hosting the £1/£2 cash game. It looks juicy; if you want a quick buck then head down and sign up for one of those tables.

It won’t be a quick buck for our remaining players though, who have ninety minute blind levels to get through in order to hit the money bubble. The players have largely been condensed to the upstairs area, though one of the more star-studded tables (Barry Greenstein, JP Kelly, Roland de Wolfe and Huck Seed) is in what is usually the Empire’s poker room. To get to it you need to go out past the reception, through another, downstairs past the slots and then up another set of stairs past the bar. Fortunately it seems like they are being moved shortly as racks are being handed out.

They’ll join their peers in the upstairs area, where poker’s best are already battling out. Only 15 minutes into the first level of the day and we’ve seen eliminations already. In the centre table at the front, Viktor Blom’s stacks of pink 5,000 chips are looming over the table next to Irish Open champion James Mitchell and opposite Freddy Deeb. Phil Ivey has the rail-friendly seat nearest the barrier and shares a table with Barny Boatman and second place in chips Bojan Gledovic, whose small denomination chips make his stack look far larger than Isildur1’s.

At the back of the room in the corner, Arnaud Mattern and Yevgeniy Timoshenko share a table with Nam Le and Hoyt Corkins – not the easiest line-up. Though, as we say time and time again at the WSOPE, there are no easy tables. Eli Elezra, chatting amicably over the incessant riffle of chips and general hubbub of the casino’s denizens, proves this by sitting alongside John Dolan and Daniel Steinberg on what is arguably the easiest table in the room. When the easiest table contains a WSOP bracelet-winner/high stakes regular and a November Niner then you know it’s a tough field.

Keep joining us for updates as Day 3 continues.



Tags: Poker News, And, they're, off!, WSOPE, Day, 3, is, underway.