Day 4 of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Championship saw the player count diminish to 15 as we get ever closer to crowning 2011’s champion. After Josh Bergman became the final player to be eliminated, the group to enter the penultimate day was set. Galen Hall tops the chip count with the only stack to peak above 3 million chips. 2011 has already been quite the year for the 24-year-old Californian.
He started the year by taking down the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for a cool $2.3million before taking his seat in the weekend’s European Poker Tour (EPT) Champion of Champions event. There he took second and €25,000 of buy-ins for the next season. Winning this will also give him a shot at poker’s Triple Crown when the World Series of Poker (WSOP) gets underway later this year. All this before the age of 25. Next year he’s reportedly going to attend college at Stanford University with the proceeds from the PCA win. That’ll be one heck of a party lifestyle Galen!
Although it transpires that we may not have a new champion after all. Last year’s winner David Williams is still hanging in there by a thread with a short stack a tenth of the size of Hall’s. There’s also the small matter of WPT Player of the Year to be resolved. Chip leader at the start of day 4, Sam El Sayed was hoping to win the whole shebang. He still can as he’s the closest to Hall in second place. Player of the Year honors may be a lot more realistic. He need only better Shannon Storr’s finish and make sure he finishes in at least fourth. Simple!
The last 15 run down as follows:
Galen Hall – 3,438,000
Sam El Sayed – 2,774,000
Roger Teska – 2,194,000
Scott Seiver – 2,001,000
Shannon Shorr – 1,786,000
Steven Kelly – 1,674,000
Tony Gargano – 1,577,000
Ashton Griffin – 1,474,000
Nenad Medic – 1,282,000
Justin Young – 1,249,000
Freddy Bonyadi – 700,000
David Peters – 633,000
Daniel Alaei – 530,000
Will Failla – 393,000
David Williams – 318,000.
