With 19 players left, he'll be back for the penultimate day with 4,566,000. Pires, a city councillor in Belo Horizonte, the Minas Gerais state capital, is bossing the PCA 2016 Main Event. It may be too early to talk about the title, but there hasn't been any Brazilian EPT winner to date.
Pires has been playing poker for nearly 30 years now and is already experiencing the best run of his life here at the PCA; this will also be his first ever EPT Main Event cash.
A stacked field remains in contention in the $5,300 tournament including American onlie pro TJ "1BigAceHole" Ulmer who is up some $820k in PokerStars tournaments. His best result came in the 2013 TCOOP Main Event when he finished third for $277k. In live tourneys, Ulmer's biggest payday came here in the Bahamas. Five years ago, he won a $1k 6-Handed event for $107k, which is his only six figure live tournament result so far. Ulmer bagged 2,200,000, entering Day 5 of the PCA Main Event fourth in chips.
British player Phillip McAllister looked set to keep the number #2 spot in the chip counts for Day 5, but lost a big pot to Randy Kritzer at the end of the day to eventually drop to fifth position. Playing as "Grindation" on PokerStars, the 22-year-old has two Sunday Million final tables under his belt as well as some juicy results in the SCOOP & WCOOP series. Prolific online, McAllister has $180k in live tournament winnings but is yet to make a breakthrough in the live arena to match his biggest online result of $350k. This deep run will be his first EPT cash and he's already guaranteed $32,360.
Among those who are still chasing the PCA 2016 Main Event title are double LAPT champion and former PCA finalist Fabian Ortiz, WSOP bracelet winner Matt Waxman, Canada's #5 in the all-time money list Mike Watson, 2014 Aussie Millions Main Event champ Ami Barer, EPT10 Prague third place finisher Stephen Chidwick, PCA 2009 Main Event runner-up Tony Gregg, PCA 2013 $25k High Roller runner-up Vladimir Troyanovskiy, 2014 WCOOP World Champion Fedor Holz and American pro Taylor Paur.
EPT7 Vilamoura champion Toby Lewis is the last remaining EPT winner in the field. He doubled up in the last hand of the night and will be back for Day 5 with xx. Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier was eliminated in 20th place for $32,360 while Friend of PokerStars Felipe Ramos bust in 45th worth $14,900.
The flagship PCA Main Event attracted 928 entries overall creating a $4,500,800 prize pool. The top 135 players will get paid and the last man standing is set to take $833,260, along with the title and coveted trophy.
PCA 2016 Main Event Day 4 top five chip counts:
1st - Leonardo Pires, Brazil, 4,566,000
2nd - Randy Kritzer, USA, 2,385,000
3rd - Fabian Ortiz, Argentina, PokerStars player, 2,309,000
4th - Timothy Ulmer, USA, Live satellite winner, 2,200,000
5th - Phillip McAllister, UK, PokerStars player, 2,152,000
