Day 5 of the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event saw 378 players return to the Amazon Room at the Rio with intentions of either chipping up or going home. Manoj Viswanathan started the day as the chip leader, but by the end of the day, David Bach had jumped to the top spot. In addition, we found out who the contenders for "Last Woman Standing" will be for this year. Finally, we said goodbye to one of poker’s favorite players, and we’re finally starting to get an idea of what the final three days of action may look like.
David Bach rode several big pots on Day 4 to move over the 1 million mark and continued the same trend on Day 5 to take the chip lead. Bach moved into the chip lead after eliminating Scott Augustine. Augustine was all-in with
Two other players are right on Bach’s coat tails. Pius Heinz finished the day with 4,699,000, followed by Kyle Johnson with 4,654,000. Heinz moved up to 3.77 million on the day after knocking out Jon Friedberg, who shoved at the turn on a board of
Two of the featured players on Day 5 were Daniel Negreanu and Jean-Robert Bellande. Negreanu had a roller coaster Day 4 and had to battle back from under 100,000 twice. He started Day 5 with 619,000 on the same table as Bellande but it appeared that he used up his "run good" the day before, and he could never win a pot. His frustration at this year’s WSOP was summed up in his final hand. He was all-in preflop for his final 95,000 with pocket tens against the
Jean-Robert Bellande couldn’t do much better than tread water on the day. He started the day with 1.134 million and finished with 1.23 million. While that is technically below the chip average of 1.4 million, a mere double-up puts him in the top 20 in chips.
Manoj Viswanathan learned how quickly things can go from the penthouse to the outhouse in Texas hold’em. He started the day as the overall chip leader with 2.11 million and soon found himself slipping down to around 1 million. He spiraled down to 550,000 before making a bit of a rebound back over 1 million. Viswanathan then called an all-in from Ray Henson with
Only three women remain in the Main Event field. Claudia Crawford, with 1.88 million, is the current leader among the remaining women. Earlier in Day 5, she soared to 2.5 million in chips after busting Matt "AllInAt420" Stout. On a flop of
Phil Collins and Ben Lamb finished fourth and fifth respectively and were the only other players to finish the day above 4 million chips. Collins finished with 4.1 million and Lamb with 4.03 million. Sebastian Ruthenberg, Lars Bonding, and Bryan Devonshire all round out the top 10 in chips on Day 5. Sam Barnhart is still alive and very strong in chips with 3.06 million. JP Kelly, Fred Berger, and Tony Hachem are all over 2 million. Joseph Cheong’s bid for his second straight November Nine appearance is still alive as he finished with 1.98 million on the day. David Sands, Minh Nguyen, Sami Kelopuro, Ray Henson, Eli Elezra, author Mitchell Cogert, and Erick Lindgren are all still alive in the field.
On Tap
Only 142 players remain in the Main Event. Those players will return on Sunday to play five levels. During that time, the field is expected to shrink by about half as players try and chip up to make their final assault on the November Nine final table.
Podcast
The main topic of discussion this week on the PokerNews Podcast was obviously the 2011 WSOP Main Event. They went over the big names, the massive field sizes, the chip leaders, and all the important news from the event. Annie Duke did stop by to discuss the Epic Poker League and the crew had a little fun with both Kristy Arnett’s "Halloween dress" and the Paul Pierce video.
Check out what you may have missed this week by accessing our archives.
Video of the Day
Phil Collins was the first player on Saturday to move over the 3 million chip mark in route to finishing the day fourth in chips. Kristy Arnett caught up with Collins during the dinner break to find out about his day and what is up with his karate chops at the table.
The Main Event may be winding down, but we are ramping up. Follow PokerNews on Facebook and Twitter.