The six players who made it past Day 1 returned to the felt at 4:30 p.m. today. Play began much like it did on Sunday—with an elimination on the second hand. Thomas Cannuli, who started the day in sixth place out of the six remaining players, was in good shape to double up when he got all in with A-A against Max Steinberg’s T-T. But Steinberg flopped a set, and Cannuli was eliminated. He earns $1,426,283 for his sixth-place finish.
After Cannuli’s elimination, it was almost another two and half hours before the next player hit the rail. During that time, we saw the first cracks in Joe McKeehen’s armor. The chip leader never lost his leader, but he experienced his first sustained downswing of the final table, falling from over 90 million in chips to under 75 million. However, the pro from Pennsylvania recovered well, moving back up above the 90 million mark.
During that time, Josh Beckley jumped into second place on the leaderboard. Beckley started the day in fifth place, just slightly ahead of Cannuli. However, he became only the second player (other than McKeehen) to break the 40 million chip mark, and was soon close to 50 million.
Much of Beckley and McKeehen’s gains came at the expense of Ofer Zvi Stern, who soon found himself short-stacked. He was eliminated when his Ace-Jack ran into Neil Blumenfield’s Ace-King. He earns $1,911,423 for finishing fifth place.
Just about an hour later, Max Steinberg fell in fourth place ($2,615,361). The dapper, suit-clad, poker and fantasy-sports professional had become short-stacked, and got into an all-in preflop confrontation with Joe McKeehen. McKeehen held Ace-Queen, Steinberg held Ace-Jack, and McKeehen’s hand held up.
With Steinberg’s elimination, there are now only three players remaining, and they’ll return tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. to play down to a winner and crown the next WSOP Main Event champion.
Here are the chip counts of the final three players:
Joe McKeehen – 128,825,000
Neil Blumenfield – 40,125,000
Josh Beckley – 23,700,000
