World Series Of Poker 3 Recap

The action is heating up, and we’re definitely in full swing at the 2010 World Series of Poker with the previous day’s champions crowned and numerous events underway; so without anymore fanfare here’s what went down at the poker tables yesterday.

Event #2: $50k Players Championship

With 21 players remaining at the end of Day 3 play, my superior prognostication for the $50,000 buy-in Players Championship tournament continues –you’ll remember in yesterday’s recap I predicted 20-25 players would make it through the day.

Perhaps the biggest story coming out of day 3 play was the Mizrachi brothers catching fire and finishing #1 and #6 in the final chip tally both with over 1 Million in chips. Mike Mizrachi is leading the tournament with just under 1.5 million, while his triplet brother Robert sits in 6th place with just over 1 million chips.

Still in the hunt for the coveted title are Poker Pros John Juanda, Erik Seidel, Andy Bloch, Eli Elezra and Lyle Berman. Strangely, many of the young Internet pros –who play a lot of mix games—are absent from the leaderboard; Alexander Kostritsyn being the biggest name from the online poker generation who is still alive in the event.

Event #3: $1,000 NLHE

Flight 1 of the $1k NLHE event saw an impressive 2,601 players, and in a reversal of the current poker trend, only 1,744 players entered on Flight 2. The tournament still had a massive field of 4,345 entrants, but this is far short of the expected 5,000+.

Much like the first day of this tournament the action was fast and furious, and in the end 200 players made it through to join the 276 players from day 1a –yesterday I reported 290 players had survived, but 276 this is the corrected number from the WSOP website.

There are some big names near the top of the leader-board in the $1k event: From day 1a, Amarillo Slim Preston, Chris Bjorin, Blair Hinkle, Jonathan Little, Vanessa Rousso, Matt lesinger, Joe Sebok, Billy Baxter, Thor Hanson and Dan Shak.

And unofficially from day 1b: Men Nguyen, Mark Seif, Eric Baldwin, David Pham, Michael Binger, Theo Tran, Brian Rast, David Chitcotsky and Prahlad Friedman.

Event #4: $1,500 Omaha hi/lo 8 or better

Omaha 8 tournaments are fast becoming known as Thang Luu tournaments, thanks to the dominance he has shown at these events during recent WSOP’s. A massive field of 818 players set their sights on taking down the reigning champ, and when all was said and done unofficially 297 players still had a chance at taking down the title.

The tournament is scheduled for 3 days, and there are still a number of top players in the hunt including UB Poker’s Phill Hellmuth.