Germany’s Anton Morgenstern leads the final 27-players in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event. A field that includes last years ninth place finisher Steve Gee and the 2001 champion ‘The Matador’ Carlos Mortenson as we reach the final day of Las Vegas reckoning.
We saw it coming, but it took until the sixth day of action for the WSOP officials to pull the field back by the reigns before they careered out of control. The 44th Annual Main Event has been proceeding at breakneck speed and so it was that the WSOP Tournament Director, Jack Effel, decided to call a halt to proceedings after just four levels of play on Day Six.
27-players remain in the hunt for the top prize of over $8.5m and wouldn’t you know it, we have a German at the head of the order. In the past 12-18 months the Germans have shown that they are the dominant force when it comes to picking up the biggest prizes that the world of poker has to offer. $8.5m falls into the basket labeled ‘Pretty Darn Big” and Anton Morgenstern is favorite to take that money back to the German economy, with almost twice as many chips as his nearest competitor – Chris Lindh.
We will not see our third female open event champion, of 2013, after Jackie Glazier was eliminated in 31st place. She was unable to reach the epic heights of Gaelle Baumann and Elisabeth Hille, who finished tenth and eleventh respectively in last years event, but she should be extremely proud of her performance after losing her final flip of the WSOP against the Italian Sergio Castelluccio.
So with Glazier now out, the WSOP scriptwriter’s choice for a happy ending has just reduced by one, but don’t fret, there are still so many exciting tales still to be told. Steve Gee can still make back-to-back main event final tables. The WSOP bracelet holder finished in ninth place, last year, and despite finishing the day as one of the shorter stacks, has the experience to make another great run at this thing.
Carlos ‘The Matador’ Mortenson had a great sixth day of action and has to be one of the favorites to take the title back to Spain. Mortenson is one of only two players to ever win three World Poker Tour (WPT) titles, and he is a two-time WSOP bracelet winner, including a 2001 main event victory, meaning he could join a very small elite group of players to win two WSOP Main Event titles. Mortenson bagged up over 10m chips to position himself towards the top end of the chip counts.
Finally, there are some great names from European and American poker still vying for contention. Benjamin Pollak was a recent runner-up at the WPT Barcelona event, David Benefield is one of the most talked about names in the online world, Yevgeniy Timoshenko is one of the sharpest minds in the business and the multiple WSOP bracelet winner JC Tran is one of the most experienced names in the game.
Day Seven will see the WSOP Vegas action come to a close with the crowning of the November Nine. For the moment it looks likely that a German is going to be amongst those fortunate to book a return flight. Whether we have a Matador, a back-to-back final tablist and a list of top pros remains to be seen. It’s the WSOP Main Event and anything is possible.
