Bubble Set to Break on Day 4 of Main Event

Day 4 of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event is underway, promising to bring the field into the money before the end of play today. The day began with 1,204 players remaining out of the original field of 7,319, with the field needing to get to 747 before players would be guaranteed to make money from this year’s event.

Several hundred players busted in the first few hours of play today, which has brought the field close to reaching the bubble. Several notables were among the early eliminations, including former World Champion Robert Varkonyi, Barry Greenstein, Annie Duke, Kathy Liebert and Barry Shulman.

When the bubble breaks, each player will be guaranteed at least $19,263. The prizes rise slowly at first, but become quite large as the field shortens, culminating in the $8.94 million first prize. Once the final table is reached, the remaining nine players will have to wait until November to play it out for the bracelet – giving the finalists the nickname “The November Nine.”

There were several potential storylines heading into the fourth day of play. While little known James Carroll was the chip leader with 803,000 in chips, two-time winner Johnny Chan wasn’t far behind, holding 636,000 chips coming into today’s action. That was good enough for 9^th place. All four Mizrachi brothers were still alive, though their chip stacks didn’t look quite as imposing as they had after Day 2. Several top players failed to make it through Day 3 and into today’s action, including Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, Jennifer Harman and Chris Moneymaker.

At the time this article was posted, there were only 792 players remaining in the Main Event, meaning there were just 45 eliminations remaining before players would make the money. According to live updates by Bluff Magazine, the current chip leader in Martjin Schirp, who holds a stack of approximately 1.3 million chips. Matt Affleck has also gone over the million chip mark, sitting on a healthy 1.1 million. Johnny Chan has also made progress, moving his large stack up to 790,000 throughout the day.