Dr. Pauly on Poker From the 2006 WPT Bellagio

Patrik Antonius takes the lead in the 2006 WPT Championship

WPT Day 3: Antonius Takes the Lead

The young gun from Finland Patrik Antonius likes playing at the Bellagio. The former model from Helsinki took second place at the WPT Five Diamond Classic in December. He made two final tables on the EPT in 2005 with a victory at the Baden Classic in Austria. He won $1.6 million in tournaments in 2005 and is looking for his first cash in a major tournament in 2006. Antonius is currently the chipleader with over $554K. He won a few big pots including winning a coinflip when he busted Mark Seif. With the average stack about $154K, he’s looking good at the end of Day three of the WPT Championships.

Here’s the unofficial Top 10 Chipcounts at the end of Day 3 (courtesy of PokerWire):

1 Patrik Antonius $554,500
2 Greg Fondacaro $540,400
3 David Williams $497,500
4 Erick Lindgren $472,300
5 Shawn Buchanan $462,100
6 Brad “Yukon” Booth $443,200
7 Abdul Fadeyi $398,000
8 Vinny Vinh $391,800
9 Mimi Tran $367,300
10 Marc Durand $366,300

463 players began the third day and just 204 remain. The Fontana Room could not hold the entire field, so tables in the poker room had to be used for the majority of the day. Actor James Woods ended the day in the Top 15 in chips. Max Pescatori took the bad beat of the day when his A-A were cracked by Brad Berman’s K-K after he caught a four flush.

The Thinker, Phil Hellmuth, remains in the field

Mike Matusow and Phil Hellmuth were seated at the same table for most of the day. You figured the two would be jawing back and forth, but the banter was light. With $3.7 million on the line, both players were on their best behavior. Matusow was eventually eliminated by Hellmuth.

Other noteworthy bustouts included: Phil Ivey, David Singer, Daniel Negreanu, Alan Goehring, Lee Watkinson, The Grinder, Lyle Berman, Mark Seif, Mike Matusow, Layne Flack, Chau Giang, Kenna James, Ted Forrest, Young Phan, Iwan Jones, Alex Kessler, Scott Fischman, Brian Haveson, Ben Roberts, John Gale, John Myung, Eric Mizrachi, John Duthie, Noah Boeken, Max Pescatori, Hung La, Ram Vaswani, Peter Costa, Amnon Filippi, Marco Traniello, Gavin Griffin, Shane Schleger, Matt Matros, Jesse Jones, Daniel Alaei, Brecher, Miami John Cernuto, John Juanda, Minh Ly, Steve Brecher, Bill Gazes, Can Kim Hua, Martin De Knijff, Harry Demetriou, Nick Schulman, John Phan, Chris Bigler, Jeff Shulman, and Frank Kassela.

After The Grinder was eliminated, Gavin Smith breathed a sigh of relief. The Grinder was his biggest competition for Player of the Year. Only John D’Agostino and Barry Greenstien have an outside chance of knocking off Smith. However, they have to pretty much win the WPT Championships out right to pick up the Player of the Year title.

Steve Dannenmann has chips and a chair at the end of day #3

Here are some noteworthy players who are still left: Patrik Antonius, David Williams, Erick Lindgren, Brad “Yukon” Booth, Vinny Vinh, Mimi Tran, Freddy Deeb, Chip Jett, James Woods, James Van Alstyne, Jennifer Harman, TJ Cloutier, Evelyn Ng, Surinder Sunar, Men “The Master” Nguyen, Chad Brown, Bill Edler, Juha Helppi, Bill Baxter, Tony Bloom, John D’Agostino, Amir Vahedi, Victor Ramdin, Chad Layne, Doug Lee, Doyle Brunson, Cliff “Johnny Bax’” Josephy, Brad Berman, Tony Ma, Dustin Woolf, Rehne Pedersen, Carl Olson, Tony G, Farzad Bonyadi, Dan Harrington, Rodeen Talebi, Erica Schoenberg, Gabe Thaler, Steven Paul-Ambrose, Ross Boatman, Arnold Spee, Tony Cousineau, Johnny Chan, Steve Dannenmann, Ted Lawson, Paul Darden, Kristy Gazes, Dewey Tomko, Mark Gregorich, Thor Hansen, Don Mullis, Jan Sorensen, Tim Phan, Allen Cunningham, David Grey, Kirill Gerasimov, Humberto Brenes, Barry Greenstein, Phil Hellmuth, Charlie Katikakis, Todd Brunson, Jason Lester, Captain Tom Franklin, David Levi, and Fabrice Soulier.

Action at the WPT Championships resume at Noon on Friday in the Fontana Room. With 204 players remaining, we’ll see if play can get close to the money since the Top 100 places get paid out.

Tao of Poker — http://taopoker.blogspot.com

Dr. Pauly reporting from the WPT Championship Tournament at the Bellagio

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