Chance Kornuth Leads $10,000 Short Deck Final Table
Just seven players remain in Event #8: $10,000 Short Deck ahead of tomorrow's final day, with the winner set to take home $296,227.
In a changed structure to accommodate the pace of the tournament, the field will play down to a winner streamed on PokerGO from 2 p.m.
Leading the final seven players is two-time bracelet winner Chance Kornuth who has made his second final table of the 2019 WSOP after a sixth-place finish in the $50,000 High Roller event for $251,128.
"I've played a $1k short deck tournament and it was fun," Kornuth told PokerNews shortly after bagging the chip lead. "I got third! This tournament is really fun as well."
From late registering the tournament, he grew his 60,000 starting stack to 2,163,000 to head the field.
| Seat | Name | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thai H | United States | 283,000 |
| 2 | Chance Kornuth | United States | 2,163,000 |
| 3 | Yong Wang | China | 1,176,000 |
| 4 | Rene van Krevelen | Netherlands | 563,000 |
| 5 | Alex Epstein | United States | 1,375,000 |
| 6 | Anson Tsang | Hong Kong | 975,000 |
| 7 | Andrew Robl | United States | 406,000 |
The Magnificent Seven
It's also a second 2019 WSOP cash for both Yong Wang and Thai Ha after they finished 23rd and 30th respectively in the $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty.
Also in contention is Andrew Robl who recorded only his fourth WSOP cash since 2010. The American's last two Hendon Mob cashes have come in Short Deck tournaments (in Las Vegas and Montenegro) and he will be hoping to use his expertise to great effect at his fifth career WSOP final table.
Rene van Krevelen has secured his first WSOP cash, the biggest his career so far, with Thai Ha needing fifth to move above $1m in lifetime earnings but a win would see him overtake Linh Tran at the top of the Vietnam all-time money list. 2018 WSOP Europe bracelet winner Anson Tsang rounds out the final seven players.
Final Day Recap
The day began with ten or so players joining the 18 that made it through Day 1. This included re-entering players like Daniel Negreanu, reigning WSOP Player of the Year Shaun Deeb and three-time bracelet winner Ben Yu.
Just like on Day 1, there was a steady stream of players joining the field and re-entering over the first two levels, but that trickle became a flood as late registration drew to a close.
Registration Closes
The field close to doubled in a matter of minutes as two dozen new faces joined the field including Phil Hellmuth, fresh from his fifth-place finish in last night's Online Event, Jean-Robert Bellande, Bill Perkins, Alex Foxen, Rainer Kempe and Randall Emmett to name but a few.
Joining with just 30 antes, it was always going to be a tough task to spin it up and several players fell by the wayside. However, Andrew Robl was not one of them as he soon moved up the counts to challenge for the overall chip lead.
At this stage, the chip lead bounced between Eric Kurtzman, Anson Tsang and Alex Epstein as Day 1 chip leader Gabe Patgorski fell back.
Hand for Hand
The four tables went hand-for-hand two off the money to combat some accusations of slow play. Eventually, it was Epstein who cracked Day 1 chip leader's Patgorski queens with ace-jack to secure the remaining 18 players $14,615.
The short stacks that had been biding their time were soon eliminated, with Matthew Gonzales and Bill Perkins both eliminated in the same hand by Dustin Dirksen.
Martijn Gerrits, Kane Kalas, Nikolai Yakovenko and Dirksen himself were all eliminated, before the redraw for the last two tables.
Alex Foxen was the first beneficiary of the pay jump to $19,591 when Epstein added another scalp, moving well over 1,000,000 chips in the process, but the eliminations slowed to a crawl once play resumed after the dinner break.
All-time money list leader Justin Bonomo was eliminated by Andrew Robl before Chance Kornuth started his assault on the chip lead with the elimination of Eric Kurtzman as Kornuth rivered a straight after Kurtzman flopped two pair.
And it was Kornuth who would eliminate the last two players as both Galen Hall and Jiaxiu Liu were sent to the rail, and Kornuth's stack moved above two million.
He will be in the driving seat when the final seven players resume tomorrow, so stay tuned to PokerNews to see if his chip lead his threatened, as well as whether he will be able to hold on to secure $296,227 in prize money and a third WSOP bracelet.