Arieh Leads $50,000 Poker Players Championship Final Table as Ivey Falls on Day 4

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Jun 28, 2019 3 min read

The 2019 Poker Players Championship final table is set as the 74-player field dwindled to the last six contenders. They will battle it out on Friday, June 28, at noon local time with the $1,099,311 top-prize and the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy on the line.

Josh Arieh leads the final six with 6,220,000 in chips. Arieh led the tournament after Day 1, stayed in the top five after Day 2, and trailed only Phil Ivey coming into Day 4. While Ivey's session at the table was a Thursday to forget, Arieh controlled the action on the outer feature table.

$50,000 Poker Players Championship Final Table Lineup

$50,000 Poker Players Championship Day 4 Action

Arieh first approached the 6-million mark when he picked off Dario Sammartino in pot-limit omaha in which he flopped threes full of eights. Bryce Yockey took over the chip lead for a brief stint, but Arieh soon re-established himself as the leader.

Andrew Brown and Talal Shakerchi never got anything going, and all exited the prestigious tournament before the first break. Chris Vitch and Dario Sammartino were gone before the second.

Meanwhile, Ivey took beat after beat on the TV table, and his stack kept plummeting. The 10-time bracelet winner eventually bubbled the final redraw, adding the eighth-place finish to his collection of PPC cashes. More details from Ivey's Day 4 can be found in our dedicated article 'A Look at Phil Ivey's Demise in the WSOP $50K Poker Players Championship.'

Play resumed for another two hours with the field spread into two groups. Arieh, Yockey, and John Esposito were all flirting with the lead while Shaun Deeb, Phil Hui, Dan Cates, and David Oppenheim oscillated between ten and fifteen big bets.

Hui was able to hit a streak of winning hands to separate himself from the bottom stacks and even eclipse Esposito in the standings. Oppenheim, on the other hand, started to slip. He fell under five bets and, unfortunately for him, couldn't recover.

The end of Oppenheim's run would come in a three-way clash in omaha hi-lo. Following four-bet action on a flop of three-ten-jack rainbow, the nine on the turn filled a king-high straight for Esposito and Yockey. Oppenheim put in his last chips, holding top two pair and a Broadway draw, but the river bricked, and the other two players chopped his stack as they both held king-queen in their respective hands.

Oppenheim's elimination brought Day 4 to its conclusion, and the final six players will continue in a set of Razz hands. There are 57 minutes left to play in level 22 with the 100,000/200,000 limits.

Neither of the final six players has previously made it this far. Deeb had notched two PPC cashes in his career with a seventh place from 2017 being his best one. Arieh has made the money once before, finishing thirteenth back in 2011. Tomorrow will bring a debut PPC payday for the remaining four finalists.

• Tags Shaun Deeb Bryce Yockey Dan Cates Phillip Hui John Esposito Josh Arieh WSOP World Series of Poker
• Related Tournaments World Series of Poker
• Related Players Shaun DeebJosh AriehDan CatesPhillip HuiJohn EspositoBryce Yockey