The stars have aligned in San Jose as the remaining 20 players make their way back to the Bay 101 Casino in the next few hours as 2010 WSOP World Champion - and current #1 player on the 2012 QuadJacks Player of the Year Leaderboard, powered by PTPR Poker - Jonathan Duhamel is in the hunt.
After fruitful stops at the PCA, EPT Deauville and the LAPC, Duhamel now has his eyes set on his first WPT victory.
To say that Duhamel has been red-hot to start the season is an absolute understatement. Duhamel is two eliminations away from collecting his sixth PTPR Score of this young poker season.
Duhamel started Wednesday's play as one of the top stacks, he then suffered a little bit of a setback only to come back strong and caused quite the stir in the poker room at one point when he eliminated fellow PokerStars Team Pro Jason Mercier late into the night.
Scott Baumstein is your overnight chip leader. Baumstein - who won the Master Classics of Poker High Rollers and the PCA Heads Up Championship in 2011 - holds 1.3M chips entering Thursday play.
Borgata Fall Poker Open winner and 2011 WSOP bracelet winner Andrew Badecker is second in chips, with 1.1M chips while Taylor Von Kriegenbergh and J.C. Tran are the only two former WPT Main Event winners still in the field. Tran and Duhamel and the only Shooting Stars still alive - eliminate either and collect the 5K bounty!
Joe Elpayaa, Eric Cajelais, Joseph Serock, Amir Lehvaot and Michael Wywrot are a few other names that shouldn't be overlooked today in San Jose.
CHIP COUNTS - FINAL 20 PLAYERS
Scott Baumstein 1,301,000
Andrew Badecker 1,106,000
Moon Kim 1,016,000
Joe Elpayaa 861,000
Eric Cajelais 807,000
Jonathan Duhamel 751,000
Taylor Von Kriegenbergh 737,000
Joe Serock 647,000
Mike McClain 537,000
Danny Le 443,000
Amir Lehavot 376,000
Ubaid Habib 365,000
Michael Wywrot 336,000
Adam Geyer 296,000
Brandon Wong 286,000
Steven Michaelis 275,000
Marko Trapani 257,000
Tu Dinh 223,000
JC Tran 145,000
Amir Khaziri 103,000
We're playing down to the WPT Final Table of six players today - cards will be in air shortly after Noon California (Pacific) time.
TOP 20 PAYOUTS (USD) 1st Place: $960,900 * 2nd Place: $570,200 3rd Place: $320,400 4th Place: $256,300 5th Place: $192,300 6th Place: $128,200 7th-8th Place: $64,000 9th-10th Place: $41,600 11th-12th Place: $32,030 13th-18th Place: $25,620 19th-20th Place: $22,420 inlcudes 25K WPT Championship seat RELATED POSTS >> 2K SIDE EVENT >> STERNBERG WINS WPT SHOOTING STAR >> DUHAMEL POM FOR JAN >> DUHAMEL WINS WSOP >> BADECKER WINS BORGATA DEFENDING CHAMPION Alan Sternberg PTPR Rank: NR | PTPR PREMIER EVENT World Poker Tour Shooting Star WPT Shooting Star NLH Main Event March 5-9, 2012 Bay 101 | San Jose, CA Buy-in: $10,000 | Prizepool: $3,458,000 Entries: 364 PTPR POINTS DISTRIBUTION 1st position 128 2nd position 78 3rd position 48 4th position 38 5th position 33 6-7th position 28 8-11th position 15 12-15th position 13 16-18th position 13 |
