The first three days of the 2008 WPT Festa al Lago flew by and without proper warning, the money bubble was already upon the players. A total of 104 players converged into the Bellagio’s Fontana Lounge looking to walk away with some cash, but only 50 would get paid by the end of the day. Well, 52, but that wasn’t part of the plan.
Coming into the day with a big chip lead, Daniel Negreanu was looking to put himself in position for his fourth WPT title. Things started off rocky for Kid Poker, but he quickly rebounded and was near the top of the leaderboard when disaster struck. On a flop of A
K
7, Ryan Fair got his last 362,000 all in against Negreanu who held A-K for top two pair. However, Fair held pocket sevens for bottom set and needed to dodge four cards to avoid elimination. The turn and river came Q10 and Fair doubled up to 745,000. Negreanu was left with just 98,000 in chips.
A few quick eliminations later and the field was down to the final 52 players. With one more elimination, the tournament would switch to hand-for-hand play. Of course, that portion of the day never came because Negreanu and Ted Lawson were eliminated on the same hand. With the field at 50, an annoucement was made that all remaining players were in the money.
Meanwhile, one table over, Jennifer Tilly was involved in a big decision for all her chips. After the announcement had been made, Tilly committed her entire stack and was declared the 50th place finisher after her bustout. The controversy came later when it was discovered that her elimination hand was playing out simultaneously with Negreanu and Lawson’s. Later in the day, we learned that all three players wound up splitting 50th place money, good for $7,105. Instead of walking away with a profit of $6,315, Tilly had to swallow a $7,895 loss.
Payouts aside, Fair continued his assault on the field with his newfound chips and even managed to take 400,000 off of former chip leader William Mietz without ever seeing a flop. He ended the day with the chip lead and 1,331,000 in chips.
Notables to finish in the money included Beth Shak (48th), David Chiu (45th), Doyle Brunson (44th), Jeremiah Vinsant (38th), Chad Layne (37th), Tony Cousineau (36th) and Matt Stout (35th).
The players will return Friday at noon to continue the march towards the final table. The length of play is still unknown, since the final table does not play out until Sunday afternoon. If the final six players are reached by the end of play Friday, the players will receive a day off on Saturday.
Here are the top ten chip counts:
- Ryan "toetagu" Fair – 1,331,000
- Will Mietz – 1,217,000
- Bertrand "Elky" Grospellier – 1,151,000
- Joe Sebok – 1,100,000
- Nenad "serb" Medic – 925,000
- Osmin "Odie" Dardon – 703,000
- Steve Fiorentini – 686,000
- "Yukon" Brad Booth – 616,000
- Joe "ender555" Ebanks – 595,000
- Nam Le – 557,000
