Day 3 Ends Without a Champion

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Ben Lamb Starts and Finishes Day 3 as the Chip Leader

Day 3 started as just the first event of the 2011 World Series of Poker to not hit the money within two days. Two players played through two grueling days of poker but left today empty-handed. Team PokerStars Pro Humberto Brenes was the first to fall, followed shortly after by Jyri Merivirta who was unlucky enough to land squarely on the money bubble.

However, what started as a race to make anything at all quickly became a race to get a nice big stack of chips. Ben Lamb and Sami Kelopuro began to emerge as the big stacks as player after player hit the rail. Notable after notable fell including Justin Scwartz, Mike McDonald, David Kitai and Joao Barbosa. Eventually, even Sam Stein, who had already won a bracelet this year in an Omaha event, fell to the talented field in a massive three-way all in won by Matt Glantz.

Glantz, however, would find his own string of hard luck. While he made it to the ESPN set, he bubbled the official final table when his {k-Diamonds} {k-Clubs} {6-Hearts} {2-Clubs} couldn't hold on against the {a-Clubs} {q-Spades} {9-Spades} {8-Clubs} of Kelopuro. That pot was only the beginning of a very active and very swingy final table for Kelopuro. Up and down most of the night, Kelopuro was able to hang on until the end of the day along with Christopher King, John Shipley and our current chip leader, Ben Lamb.

Lamb has seemingly controlled this event the entire day. Just a week removed from his second place finish to Stein, he has had his opponents on lock-down once again. He entered the day with the chip lead and has been one of the top stacks at virtually every stage of the tournament on Day 3. He even had to battle back from losing to a three-outter at the final table for about an average sized stack at the time. Exiting the day as the chip leader, he will certainly have redemption on his mind when he goes to sleep (if he can).

The tournament is scheduled to pick back up again tomorrow at 3 p.m. local time so make sure you come right back to PokerNews where we will bring you all of the action from the Rio.