Crunching the Numbers During Day 4
In four hours of play on Day 4, 11 players have been eliminated from the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open $10 Million Guarantee Championship Event, and the remaining 10 players have formed the unofficial final table. It looks like this:
Seat | Player | Chips | Big Blinds |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Samuel Guilabert | 1,240,000 | 12 |
2 | Griffin Arnold | 3,100,000 | 31 |
3 | Derrick Cutler | 3,900,000 | 39 |
4 | Larry Klur | 2,600,000 | 26 |
5 | Panagiotis Nifakos | 2,750,000 | 27 |
6 | Justin Bonomo | 8,850,000 | 88 |
7 | Blair Hinkle | 18,500,000 | 185 |
8 | Greg Lehn | 4,300,000 | 43 |
9 | Ray Qartomy | 14,100,000 | 141 |
10 | Mukul Pahuja | 11,900,000 | 119 |
The average stack is 7.152 million chips, which is roughly 72 big blinds. In the first four hours of play, roughly three players per hour were eliminated, or roughly four per level.
Combined, the 11 players earned $770,817, which averages out to $70,074 per person. Not bad if you only fired one or two bullets in this $5,300 buy-in event.
Krystal Seiling (12th) and Jeremy Kottler (11th) are the only two players who have earned more than six figures thus far, collected $116,350 each for their efforts. The player who finishes in 10th will earn the same amount.
If the remaining 10 players agreed to do an even chop — which is as likely as Phil Ivey folding aces preflop — they would all take home $610,837, which is a little less than fourth place money ($639,925). It’s also $37,633 more than Carlos Mortensen received for bubbling the World Series of Poker Main Event final table.
According to the Hendon Mob, for all but two of the players at the unofficial final table, the $1,745,245 first-place prize is larger than all of their career live tournament earnings combined. Justin Bonomo ($6,079,068) and Blair Hinkle ($1,770,558) are the two exceptions, and Hinkle clears the margin by just over $25,000.
Hinkle is also the only WSOP bracelet winner remaining. He won a $2,000 no-limit hold’em event back in 2008, earning $507,613. Blair’s brother Grant Hinkle also won a bracelet that summer.
The only other player with even close to seven figures in career tournament earnings is Ray Qartomy. The Texas native has nearly $950,000 in earnings thanks to a high volume – his largest cash came in 2011, when he finished runner-up in the 2011 Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic for $133,230.
Mukul Pahuja, who started the day as the chip leader and moved to Florida two years ago with his now wife, has over $600,000 in career tournament earnings. This is his first career six-figure score, and his previous largest score ($92,050) came at The Isle here in South Florida. Pahuja finished fourth in the 2011 Florida State Poker Championships.
The most important figure right now, however, is the number six. Play will conclude on Day 4 when the remaining players reach an official final table of six, and from there the race to a seven-figure score will be on.