The starting field of 1,189 players has been pared down to just 36 after three days of play in the World Poker Tour (WPT) Borgata Poker Open Main Event, and among the final 36 players vying for the $825k first-place prize are Team PokerStars Pro Vanessa Selbst, poker staking legend Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy, and Parx Casino Ambassador Matt Glantz.

The chip-leader heading into Thursday’s Day 4 action will be Cong Pham. Pham will take his seat with over 2.5 million chips, but that number could have been far higher if he hadn’t folded to Cliff Josephy in what will surely be one of the most talked about hands this year. Here is what happened according to the WPT Live Reporting feed:

Cong Pham raises under the gun and Cliff Josephy calls from the big blind. The flop falls QTT and Josephy check-calls 30,000 from Pham to see the 7 turn. Josephy checks, Pham bets 60,000, and Josephy calls. The K river completes the board and Josephy checks again. Pham bets 150,000, but is met with a check-raise shove from Josephy for 675,000. Pham goes deep into the tank, announces to the table that he has pocket kings, tanks for a little while longer, and flashes KK as he folds. Reluctant to show, Josephy flashes the T as he collects the pot.

Cliff Josephy  –  1,050,000  (87 bb) Cong Pham  –  2,250,000  (187 bb)

One of two things happened here: either Pham had Josephy on the unlikely hand of TT, or more likely he misread the board and didn’t realize he had filled-up on the river and thought he simply had an over-pair to the board. Still, Pham is the overall chip-leader, but hopefully this fold will not come back to haunt him.

Among the players falling by the wayside on Wednesday were Paul Volpe (39th), Matt Salsberg (46th), Christina Lindley (49th), Jonathan Little (59th), and Allen Kessler (63rd).

Here is a look at the Top 10 chip counts heading into Day 4 of the WPT Borgata Poker Open Main Event:

1. Cong Pham — 2,548,000

2. Jake Schwartz — 2,145,000

3. David Johnston — 2,050,000

4. David Randall — 2,020,000

5. Vanessa Selbst — 1,739,000

6. Jeremy Kottler — 1,734,000

7. Anthony Zinno — 1,643,000

8. Richard Tatalovich — 1,506,000

9. Alexander Rocha — 1,473,000

10. Zachary Kottler — 1,443,000

Day 4 will begin with the players heading into Level 24, with blinds of 10,000/20,000 and a 3,000 chip ante. The average chip-stack is just under 1 million, and the remaining 36 players will compete until the final table of six is reached.

*resources: www.worldpokertour.com

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 19th, 2013 at 7:48 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “WPT Borgata: Selbst, Josephy and Glantz among final 36”

1. Lee says:

   September 20, 2013 at 2:14 pm

   It would be great if Selbst won it