Day 2 of the 2015 WSOP $10,000 Main Event final table was completed last night with only three players left and Joe McKeehen still holding the majority of chips in play. The three survivors are set to return to Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino today at 6:00 pm and to play down to a champion.
This year’s $10,000 Main Event attracted a field of 6,420 entries who created a prize pool of $60,355,857. The top 1,000 finishers received a portion of the money, with payouts starting from $15,000. Apart from being crowned the 2015 WSOP Main Event Champion, the winner will also collect tonight the total amount of $7,683,346 for his triumph.
As reported yesterday, Day 2 of the final table started with McKeehen as the chip leader, holding 91,450,000 in chips, more than a half than all chips in play. Play resumed from Level 37 and it took a little more than two levels for the last three standing players to be determined. The day started with six returning hopefuls and saw three players leave the final table.
Similarly to Day 1 of the official Main Event final table, the first elimination came after only two hands of play. Thomas Cannuli, who started the day as the short stack, could not hold up against Max Steinberg and had to leave the final table in 6th place. The player received $1,426,283 for his efforts.
Elimination number two came about two and a half hours later. During that time, McKeehen experienced his first major downfall since the beginning of final table play. He never lost his chip lead but fell from more than 90 million to under 75 million at some point. However, he managed to quickly get back what had been lost.
Ofer Zvi Stern, who was second in chips at the beginning of the day, was the next to hit the rail. He was the short stack at the time of his elimination. Stern was busted in 5th place by Neil Blumenfield and collected $1,911,423.
An hour later, poker and fantasy sports pro Max Steinberg was eliminated in 4th place by McKeehen. Steinberg was the only former gold bracelet winner at this year’s Main Event final table. The player won his only WSOP gold piece back in 2012, when he topped the field of the 43rd Annual WSOP $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em. Steinberg collected a total of $2,615,361 for his 4th place in this year’s Main Event.
As mentioned above, the three remaining players will return to play down to champion at 6 pm local time. Action will resume from Level 39, with blinds at 500,000/1,000,000. And here are the three survivors and their respective chip counts:
Joe McKeehen – 128,825,000
Neil Blumenfield – 40,125,000
Josh Beckley – 23,700,000
