The GGPoker World Series of Poker Circuit event is down to its last nine players and there are some superstars waiting to battle at the felt for the famed Circuit Ring and perhaps more importantly, the $1,236,361 top prize.
With 6,395 entries, the $1,700 buy-in was stumped up by a huge number of players and that meant the $10 million guarantee was exceeded to an eventual total prizepool of $10,327,925.
With 700 players paid, Day 2 started with 1,112 players, meaning the bubble had not yet burst, and play might have been expected to slow down a little. With the two final turbo Day 1 flights running into that Day 2, however, play carried on at a lick of pace, with an orbit at each of the remaining tables producing over 100 bust-outs.
There were some big names who ran close to the money but missed out on profit, such as Christian Rudolph, Juan Pardo, Kenny Hallaert, David Yan, GGPoker ambassador Felipe Ramos and Fedor Holz, with the min-cash of $4,107 eluding them all.
Others snuck into the money places, with players such as Brunno Botteon, Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier, Mohsin Charania, Jack Salter, Noah Boeken, Mark Radoja, Laurynas Levinskas and former WSOP Main Event winner Ryan Riess all cashing but failing to make the business end of the tournament.
Inside the top 100 places, there were more hard luck stories for big names in the game, with the latest big GGPoker WSOPC winner Niklas Astedt busting, and he was joined on the rail by players such as Ronny Kaiser, Michael Addamo and Mike ‘SirWatts’ Watson to name just three.
Later still, others such as Danny Tang, Simon Mattsson and Philippe D’Auteuil all departed, and it was around this time that a certain WSOP bracelet winner began to truly thrive. Joseph Cheong was nestling at the top of the leaderboard and starting to make his quality count.
Back in 2010, this epic hand at the World Series of Poker saw Joseph Cheong’s aces lose to 7-5 after all the chips went into the middle on a 5-6-6 flop.
Cheong managed to stay at the higher reaches of the leaderboard late in the day and will go into play in the final with 63 big blinds, holding 50.7 million chips. Only two players have more chips than Cheong, with the chip leader heading into the final being Macau-based Lithuanian Paulis Plausinaitis (76 million/95 big blinds) and second-placed Belarussian Artem Prostak (54 million/68 big blinds) also ahead of Cheong’s stack.
Those three are not the only big players awaiting in what is sure to be a stacked final table when it takes place on Saturday 16th January. Finnish poker pro Joni Jouhkimainen with go into battle with only 13.8 million chips (17 big blinds) but will have nothing to lose by going on the attack. Romanian Alexandru Papazian has 25.1 million chips (31 big blinds) and will be an even bigger threat to the established players at the table in terms of chips.
The action is sure to be superb when the final takes place, with kick-off time on the 16th January (this coming Saturday) being at 6.30pm UTC and broadcast on a live delay on the GGPoker Twitch channel.
With blinds meaning the average stack is just over 44 big blinds, only four players have that, so you’ll want to tune in for kick-off as those below the line will need to make moves – and quick.
GGPoker WSOPC Main Event Final Table Chipcounts:
| Position | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blinds | |
| 1 | Paulis Plausinaitis | Lithuania | 76,004,224 | 95 | |
| 2 | Artem Prostak | Belarus | 54,179,291 | 68 | |
| 3 | Joseph Cheong | United States | 50,700,582 | 63 | |
| 4 | ‘likeboy’ | China | 47,269,129 | 59 | |
| 5 | Alexandru Papazian | Romania | 25,140,091 | 31 | |
| 6 | ‘turkey1’ | China | 21,939,160 | 27 | |
| 7 | ‘BetAddict’ | Israel | 20,263,058 | 25 | |
| 8 | Joni Jouhkimainen | Finland | 13,814,882 | 17 | |
| 9 | ‘DaiMing141319’ | China | 8,992,305 | 11 |
