Forty-one players took their seats this afternoon at the start of Day 3 in the World Series of Poker Event #5: $565 Colossus No Limit Hold'em, but only nine advanced to Wednesday's final table. The winner will take home the top prize of $1,000,000.
The chip lead is held by Mark Babekov, who ended the day with 19,025,000 in chips. Second in chips is Erkut Yilmaz with 16,000,00, followed by Taylor Black with 13,300,000 chips.
Among the notables at the final table are Matt Affleck and Luke Vrabel. The chip leader at the start of the day, Raul Martinez Requena, busted in a hand against Yilmaz in 11th place. After his bust-out the players merged onto the unofficial final table, where the bubble lasted a bit more than three hours until Jason Orrell was eliminated in 10th place.
Final Table
Seat
Player
Country
Chip Count
1
Erkut Yilmaz
United States
16,000,000
2
Thomas Pomponio
United States
10,125,000
3
Mark Babekov
United States
19,025,000
4
Ralph Massey
United States
5,300,000
5
Taylor Black
United States
13,300,000
6
John Hanna
United States
7,550,000
7
Luke Vrabel
United States
4,000,000
8
Kent Coppock
United States
11,500,000
9
Matt Affleck
United States
3,500,000
The final table will continue Wednesday at 2 p.m. and play down to a winner. Follow all the updates here on PokerNews throughout the 2017 World Series of Poker. Below you can find the end-of-day-chip counts of all players.
We got to the table to see the flop. Both Christopher Mitts and Mark Babekov checked. On the turn, the appeared. Babekov checked, Mitts bet 240,000, and Babekov raised to 10,000,000 — he liked it as a round number. Mitts called, which meant he was all in.
Mitts showed for a pair of nines, and Babekov showed for a flush draw. The river brought another diamond for the flush, so Babekov climbed to more than 20,000,000 chips. Mitts was eliminated in 12th place.
Taylor Black raised to 500,000 from under the gun, and Hugo Perez re-raised to 1,300,000. Black took his time and decided to go all in. Perez snap-called.
Perez:
Black:
The board ran out — no help for Perez, and he was eliminated in 14th place.
Ronald Lemco moved all in from under the gun for approximately 480,000, Robert Elliott reshoved from middle position for about 2,100,000, and Luke Vrabel called all in for 1,830,000.
Lemco tabled , but he trailed both Elliott, who showed , and Vrabel, who dominated them both with .
The board ran out and Vrabel's hand stayed best. He rocketed out of his seat and let out an ear-splitting cheer, prompting a player at an adjacent table to tell him to take a deep breath.
"Don't tell me to take a deep breath!" Vrabel belted. "That was the biggest #$^@%$ spot of my life."
Event #5 of the 2017 World Series of Poker at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino continues today as the Colossus III reaches the penultimate day in the search for a new champion and gold bracelet winner.
A total of 18,054 entries and 9,074 unique players over six starting flights generated a prize pool of $9,027,000 with the eventual winner guaranteed $1,000,000.
Day 2 was a whirlwind of eliminations as the field was scythed down from a starting number of 634 to today’s returning 41 players after 10 one-hour levels of play wrapping up at 3 am.
Raul Martinez Requena from the U.K. is the man out in front as the Day 3 chip leader on 5,270,000, while Erkut Yilmaz sits in second on 5,150,000 with Pojana Jenne currently in third with 4,700,000.
Other notables still in the hunt for a gold bracelet include Matt Affleck (2,890,000), Tom Hall (930,000), Gavin O'Rourke (3,000,000) and Michael Telker (2,155,000).
Today the survivors will play down to a final table of nine before they bag up their chips. Levels remain at one hour with breaks every two levels and a one-hour dinner break after Level 6 coming at approximately 8:30 pm. The clock will begin at Level 29 which is 40,000 / 80,000 with a ante of 10,000.
Cards are in the air at 2 p.m. in Brasilia over at Tables 700-713.
PokerNews is proud to return as the official Live Reporting partner of the WSOP 2017 so stay tuned as we bring you all the action from the felt as the Colossus strides on towards crowning a new champion who will become a millionaire.
and got called by Erkut Yilmaz with 
.
, and with Requena out, the unofficial final table of 10 was set.
flop. Both Christopher Mitts and Mark Babekov checked. On the turn, the 
appeared. Babekov checked, Mitts bet 240,000, and Babekov raised to 10,000,000 — he liked it as a round number. Mitts called, which meant he was all in.
for a pair of nines, and Babekov showed 
for a flush draw. The river brought another diamond for the flush, so Babekov climbed to more than 20,000,000 chips. Mitts was eliminated in 12th place.
flop and got a call from Matt Affleck.
, and Affleck was on a draw with 
.
river missed the flush but gave Affleck queens up to send Brereton to the rail.
to eliminate Gish.
