Marvin Rettenmaier Leads Final Nine In World Poker Tour Championship

Only nine players are left in the 2012 World Poker Tour Championship $25,000 main event, with the prestigious title and the $1,196,858 first prize on the line. The chip leader is Marvin Rettenmaier with 3,757,000 in chips, with a number of other notable players still in the mix including Michael Mizrachi, Hafiz Khan and Nick Schulman.

Two of the remaining players are already inside the top 50 in the 2012 Card Player Player of the Year race, including Steve O’Dwyer in 44th place and 2012 WPT Bay 101 champion Moon Kim. With 1,008 POY points for first, O’Dwyer could move as high as 7th place with a win, while Kim could rocket into second place.

Rettenmaier, who is currently ranked 67th, could move into 12th place if he goes on to take down this event. The remaining nine will return on Thursday, May 24th to play down to a final table of six.

Day 5 began on the money bubble with 19 players remaining and only 18 getting paid. Josh Arieh was the unfortunate bubble boy, going out in 19th place when he ran his AJ into the KK of Marvin Rettenmaier and was unable to improve.

After the bubble burst, a number of the shorter stacks were sent to the rail in relatively quick succession, including Guillaume Darcourt in 18th ($40,266), last year’s runner-up in this event Farzad Bonyadi in 17th ($40,266), and 2012 WPT Venice Grand Prix champ Rinat Bogdanov in 16th ($40,266).

Card Player Publisher Barry Shulman also made a deep run, ultimately busting in 15th Place ($43,926) when his pocket nines ran into the pocket tens of Trevor Pope. Next to go was Tom McCormick in 14th ($43,926) and then WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open champion Matt Juttelstad, who was unable to make his second WPT final table, eventually going out in 13th ($43,926).

With the field whittled down to 12 players Hafiz Khan went on a run to take the chip lead, doubling through Moon Kim and then eliminating John Esposito in 12th place ($47,587) to build his stack to more than 4 million in chips. Khan then found himself in a massive pot against Michael Mizrachi.

Joe Serock opened to 64,000 from middle position and Mizrachi reraised to 177,000 from the cutoff. Khan cold four-bet to 375,000 from the button, Serock folded and Mizrachi called. The board came down Q64 and Mizrachi checked. Khan fired 400,000 and Mizrachi check raised all-in for 1,013,000 more. Khan made the call and Mizrachi flipped over his AQ. Khan was well behind with JJ. The turn brought the Q and the river the 6, and just like that Mizrachi won a roughly 2.8 million-chip pot to overtake the chiplead.

With the elimination of Ron Coury in 11th Place ($47,587), the remaining ten players converged on the unofficial final table. Ten Handed play continued for quite some time before Joe Serock got the last of his chips in with the 99 against Rettenmaier’s AK. The board ran out Q77KQ, pairing Rettenmaier’s king and eliminating Serock in 10th place. Serock, who is currently ranked 14th in the Player of the Year race and has already made two final tables this season on the WPT, picked up another $47,587 in prize money, bringing his year-to-date earnings in 2012 to $714,821.

Here are the complete chip counts for the final nine:

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