205 Remain in WSOP Main Event Hunt

At the end of Day Five of the World Series of Poker’s Main Event, just 205 players remain in the race for the coveted gold bracelet. The chip leader heading into the sixth day is Canadian Evan Lampera, but several big names remain in contention as the tournament begins to head towards its dramatic conclusion.

Day Five began with 574 players, but it took just eight hours to cut the field and end today’s play. Lamprea has a total of 3,564,000 in chips, putting him slightly ahead of Michael Skender of Germany, who has also passed the 3.5 million chip mark.

But most eyes will be the man in ninth place – Johnny Chan. The two time Main Event winner and holder of ten World Series of Poker bracelets is right in the thick of contention, and has remained among the leaders throughout the last few days of competition. Michael Mizrachi has also kept himself in excellent shape, holding nearly 1.8 million in chips heading into Day Six, good enough for a spot in the top 30. His brother Robert is also still in the field as well, but has a short stack, with just 224,000 chips to his name.

Michael Mizrachi is also still in the hunt for the Player of the Year race, though just barely. Currently, the leader is Frank Kassela, who busted on Day Four, meaning he both cashed and picked up enough Player of the Year points to take the lead in the contest. Mizrachi has an outside chance to catch him – if he can win the Main Event, he will tie Kassela for the lead.

As always, there were several notable eliminations on Day Five – though the pain of these knockouts may have been tempered somewhat by the fact that, at this point, the money had already been reached.

The biggest elimination came when Scotty Nguyen became one of the last eliminations of the day, falling out of the tournament in 209^th place. This made Chan the only former champion to remain in the field. Other professional players who said goodbye on Day Five included Vanessa Selbst, Jason Mercier, Sammy Farha and Hoyt Corkins. The elimination of Selbst means that just one woman remains in the field (Breeze Zuckerman).

Day Six will be played on Thursday, when the tournament will be played down to under 100 players (81 being a likely number). Every remaining player is guaranteed a minimum prize of $48,847, with prizes rising rapidly as the field shrinks.