Dobson Leads Finne and Martin As Three Remain in Event #25: $1,500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8 or Better
Three days and 30 hours of split-pot poker couldn't reveal the name of the champion of Event #25: $1,500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8 or Better. There are still three contenders eyeing the $173,528 winner's cheque and the WSOP bracelet that awaits the victor of the 25th bracelet event of the 2018 World Series of Poker.
Benjamin Dobson, Tim Finne and Jesse Martin will come back for an unscheduled Day 4 to continue their quest for the title. Dobson is sporting the biggest stack, holding nearly 60-percent of all chips in play. It's a shallow affair: just 24 big bets are left in play when the final three return on Thursday, June 14 at 2 p.m. to close things out.
| Seat | Player | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Benjamin Dobson | United Kingdom | 2,615,000 |
| 3 | Jesse Martin | United States | 675,000 |
| 5 | Tim Finne | United States | 1,185,000 |
Final table results and remaining payouts:
| Position | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $173,528 | ||
| 2 | $107,243 | ||
| 3 | $74,324 | ||
| 4 | Richard Monroe | United States | $52,359 |
| 5 | Tom McCormick | United States | $37,504 |
| 6 | James Nelson | United States | $27,321 |
| 7 | Georgios Sotiropoulos | Greece | $20,248 |
| 8 | Peter Brownstein | United States | $15,271 |
One or two scoops can significantly shift the momentum and chip advantage either way. Despite being significantly shorter than Dobson, Finne and Martin improved their stacks on the very last hand of today's play, chopping Dobson's chips in a three-way four-bet pot that saw Martin at risk on fourth street.
All rivals had a different path to make it to their current situations. Dobson started the day as a chipleader and kept the commanding position for the vast majority of the day, including at the final table. Towards the end, he surpassed the 3 million mark but eventually settled for 2,615,000 after giving up some bets in the aforementioned hand.
Finne was the opposite. He was mostly grinding a short stack and while he climbed up every now and then, he showed patience when the tournament got down to four players and then three. Finne, however, always found a way to stay afloat. And while he's already improved on his last year's fourth-place finish, he's eager to complete his come back and win the gold. Finne ended with 1,185,000 to put him in second place for the night.
Martin knows what it's like to sport gold as the American already has two bracelets in his showcase. He's been pushing hard to add his third and no player on the final table experienced bigger swings than him. Martin's stack kept oscillating within a range of anything between 300,000 and 1.8 million. The two-time bracelet winner seemed to have great runouts most of the time as his board often displayed four different low cards. Yet, his chips came and went and he wasn't able to hold onto a big stack for a significant amount of time and eventually finished the day as the shortest stack with 675,000.
Day 3 saw 20 players hit the rail, including three-time WSOP champs Barry Greenstein (18th for $4,899) and Eli Elezra (12th for $9,165), as well as Hollywood star James Woods who fell in 17th place, picking up the same reward as Greenstein.
Tom McCormick made his 15th final table on the WSOP or WSOP Circuit stage but will have to come back another time if he's to claim his first bracelet. McCormick walked away in fifth place and Richard Monroe followed him as the last man who busted before play was suspended.
The final showdown between Dobson, Finne and Martin will be again monitored by PokerNews live reporters so make sure to come back at 2 p.m. PST to follow the live coverage.
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, relegating him to a fourth-place finish.
. McCormick placed all his chips in front of him and Richard Monroe isolated with a raise. Nobody else joined and McCormick raced for his tournament life.
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, Richard Monroe raised with the 
and James Nelson cold-called with the 
for queens and a seven-low. Monroe had 
for kings up. 
(folded on fifth street)
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gave him outs for high if Monroe didn't fill up on the river after getting the 
for quads and we didn't see Cha's hand but he couldn't beat anyone so he headed out in ninth.
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and slammed it down, lamenting his poor luck and saying Martin outdrew him three times.