Defending Champ Greg Merson Still Alive In 2013 World Series Of Poker Main Event Going Into Day 5Former Champ Carlos Mortensen Still Alive As Well |
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Poker pro Greg Merson still had a shot to defend his 2012 main event title after the fourth day of grueling play on Friday at the World Series of Poker.
Merson ended the day with a solid 635,000, but which is below the average of 797,322. A total of 239 were left out of the starting field of 6,352.
The Maryland native should not be worried about trying to navigate the tournament with a small stack. Last year, he was reduced to just a handful of chips before amounting an historic comeback all the way to sitting with all the chips come October.
The last player to go back-to-back was Johnny Chan in the late 1980s, but he beat out much smaller fields than are typical of the main event these days.
In addition to Merson there are a lot of big name pros still left.
They include Brett Richey, David Benefield, Mark Newhouse, Jackie Glazier, Max Steinberg, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Ashton Griffin, Bryan Pellegrino, Annette Obrestad (who has a WSOP Europe title to her name), J.C. Tran, Ronnie Bardah, Kyle Julius, Vivek Rajkumar, Vitaly Lunkin, Marvin Rettenmaier, Noah Schwartz, Steve Gee, Roland Israelashvili, Jonathan Jaffe, Shawn Sheikhan, Amit Makhija, Carlos Mortensen, Greg Mueller and Kristy Gazes.
Like Merson, Mortensen is a former champion of the main event.
Everyone is trailing Jon Lane, who ended the day with 2,839,000. Lane, who hails from the state of Wisconsin, has about $160,000 in career tournament scores.
All players are gunning for a first-place prize of $8.3 million.
Notable eliminations on the day include Marcel Luske, Matt Stout, Adam Friedman, Ludovic Lacay, Melanie Weisner, Russell Thomas, Jon Turner, Matt Marafioti, Allen Cunningham, Rob Salaburu, Matt Affleck, Tuan Le, Doyle Brunson, Mark Kroon, James Van Alstyne, James Bord, Michael Mizarachi, Stephen Chidwick, Paul Wasicka, Tony Ma, Mike Watson and Farzard Bonyadi, who was eliminated on the bubble.
A total of 648 players were paid, and the money bubble actually burst on Friday rather painlessly, with not a long time of hand-for-hand action. All players finishing in the money guaranteed themselves a payday of $19,106.
Brunson, a 10-time champion in World Series of Poker events, received a standing ovation when he was busted. It could be his last main event of his illustrious career.
Stay tuned to CardPlayer.com for more updates from poker’s most prestigious event. Day 5 will begin at noon local time on Saturday in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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