Five-Time Bracelet Winner Cunningham Through to BIG 50 Day 4
Twelve more levels are in the books at the end of Day 3 of the massive BIG 50 - $500 No-Limit Hold'em. Just two more days remain before the 2019 World Series of Poker crowns the first Big 50 champion, and 127 players are still in contention.
Amer Torbay, coming from Venezuela and cashing here in only his second ever WSOP event, is the clear chip leader at the end of the night, finishing with a whopping 32,500,00 chips, good for 65 big blinds coming back to blinds at 250,000/500,000 with a 500,000 ante.
The second spot on the leader board belongs to David Rasmussen (1,339,000), with 2018 bracelet-winner Diogo Veiga rounding out the top three stacks with 1,196,000 chips and looking for the second gold bracelet of his career.
Some of the notables who are still in the running for the coveted WSOP gold bracelet and first-place prize of $1,147,449 include Jason Wheeler (20,750,000), former WSOPE final tablist Andrei Konopelko (30,200,000) and Daniel Gamer (17,500,000).
"It feels like the Main Event!"
Cunningham, the owner of five WSOP bracelets, started the day with 500,000 and managed to climb and stay amongst the biggest stacks during the day. On one of the last hands on Day 3 he check-raised the flop and jammed the turn, getting a fold from his opponent to move above 20 million in chips.
"Today I've gone from 500,000 to 20 million!" said Cunningham. "Which is kind of bad as I wanted 40!"
"I didn't really expect anything out of this tournament, obviously with 28,000 people. But I just played one day at a time, hand after hand and suddenly sometimes you have like a zillion times what you started with."
Cunningham says he's been enjoying the atmosphere at the tables.
"It feels like the Main Event! You start with so many chips and it plays so long, I feel like I'm in some kind of big one! I look up and see $7,000 and I was expecting $700,000 by now."
The remaining players are guaranteed $7,169 when they start Day 4 on June 6th at 11am.
End of Day Recap
The day began with 1,597 players from a total of 28,371 entries between the four starting days, making this the biggest event in WSOP's history. It surpasses the 2015 Colossus (22,374 entries) as biggest-ever live tournament.
Tony Miles, who finished second to John Cynn in last year's World Series of Poker Main Event, winning $5,000,000 in the process, busted early today and cashed here in his first event at this 2019 WSOP. Another early elimination was 2017 WSOP Player of the Year Chris Ferguson.
With such a massive field, it's no surprise that some familiar faces made it in the money today, including Justin Liberto ($6,054) , Robert Brown ($7,169), Larry Wright ($6,054), Yaser Al-Keliddar ($6,054), reigning WSOP APAC champion Scott Davies ($4,397), Daniel Zack ($3,782), Ari Engel ($3,782), Upeshka De Silva ($3,782), Todd Witteles ($3,273) and Jeff Madsen ($1,744).
Jerald Williamson, chip leader at the beginning of the day and one of the fan favourites in the BIG 50 after stories of the Vietnam veteran's battle with cancer and poker history, busted on the last level against Daniel Ghobrial.
Day 4 begins at 11:00 a.m. Tuesday, and players will battle it out to be down to six players with a 20-minute break every two levels and a 60-minute dinner break after Level 8.