Igor Kurganov Leads the Final Nine Players into Day 4

Photo:  Chipleader Igor Kurganov

Day 3 of the WPT ARIA Summer Championship comes to an end with nine players, and Day 2 chipleader Igor Kurganov is also the Day 3 chipleader, this time bagging up 1.42 million (142 big blinds).

Here are the official seating positions and chip counts for the final nine players:

Seat 1.  Noah Schwartz  –  821,000  (82 bb)
Seat 2.  Kevin Eyster  –  400,000  (40 bb)
Seat 3.  Steve Yea  –  316,000  (32 bb)
Seat 4.  Yan Shing Tsang  –  650,000  (65 bb)
Seat 5.  Igor Kurganov  –  1,420,000  (142 bb)
Seat 6.  Jim Collopy  –  1,222,000  (122 bb)
Seat 7.  Matthew Wantman  –  1,322,000  (132 bb)
Seat 8.  Art Papazyan  –  1,093,000  (109 bb)
Seat 9.  Ryan Laplante  –  440,000  (44 bb)

While Kurganov started and ended the day with the chip lead, he lost the lead early in the first level and didn’t gain it back until the last level of the day when his held up against Tom Marchese’s to knock out Marchese in 15th place.

The Money Bubble was a long one, taking 23 hands to knock out one player. Dominik Nitsche and Rainer Kempe were the shortest stacks, and they both got to the point where they’d be forced all in within a hand or two.

Nitsche made his stand in Hand #22 when he was under the gun with , and was lucky enough to be up against Justin Bonomo’s in the big blind. Nitsche doubled up to a relatively comfortable four big blinds.

In Hand #23, Rainer Kempe played his final hand from under the gun, but his lost to Ormson’s on a board of . Ormson won the pot with two pair, and Kempe was knocked out on the bubble as the other 24 players locked up at least a min-cash of $16,240.

Speaking of the prizepool, here are the remaining payouts at stake, followed by the players who finished in the money on Day 3:

1st:  $443,475*
2nd:  $285,650
3rd:  $209,980
4th:  $156,220
5th:  $117,640
6th:  $89,685
7th:  $69,230
8th:  $54,120
9th:  $42,845

10th:  Steve Zolotow  –  $42,845
11th:  Kitty Kuo  –  $34,365
12th:  Tanveer Dhanjal  –  $34,365
13th:  Justin Bonomo  –  $27,925
14th:  Jason Koon  –  $27,925
15th:  Tom Marchese  –  $22,995
16th:  Seth Davies  –  $22,995
17th:  Jake Schwartz  –  $19,195
18th:  Chance Kornuth  –  $19,195
19th:  Don Vu  –  $19,195
20th:  Tobias Ziegler  –  $19,195
21st:  Jeremy Ausmus  –  $16,240
22nd:  Larry Ormson  –  $16,240
23rd:  Thomas Winters  –  $16,240
24th:  Dominik Nitsche  –  $16,240

Photo:  Erkut Yilmaz (pictured here with his wife Esre) won two events this season — the WPT Borgata Poker Open and WPT Rolling Thunder — which carried him to victory in the Hublot WPT Player of the Year race.

The other big news of the day was the conclusion of the Hublot WPT Player of the Year race for Season XVII. Erkut Yilmaz began this event with the POY points lead, but at the start of Day 3, there were still two players in the field who could pass him — Jake Schwartz, who needed to finish fourth or better, and three-time WPT champion Anthony Zinno, who needed a victory here to pick up his second WPT POY title.

Unfortunately for Zinno, he was eliminated before the Money Bubble, and while Schwartz earned his fifth WPT cash of the season, he only made it as far as 17th place before getting knocked out.

That left Erkut Yilmaz, who won two WPT events this season, as the official Hublot WPT Player of the Year for Season XVII. In addition to the title, Yilmaz wins a fantastic prize package that includes a $15,000 WPT Passport** that can be used for buy-ins to WPT events, along with some nice travel perks and a beautiful Hublot watch (approx. $25K value).

Congratulations to Hublot WPT Player of the Year Erkut Yilmaz!

Day 4 begins tomorrow (Wednesday) at 12:00 noon PDT, and even though the final nine players are exceptionally deep in chips (the average chip stack is about 86 big blinds), it should be a relatively short day as they’ll only be playing down from nine players to six. The six-handed WPT Final Table is scheduled to begin Friday at 12:00 noon PDT.

* First prize amount includes the winner’s $15,000 entry into the season-ending Baccarat Crystal WPT Tournament of Champions.

** The WPT Passport offers buy-in credits to events and is only redeemable in the following season. The WPT Passport expires at the Season 18 WPT Tournament of Champions.

Photography by Joe Giron / PokerPhotoArchive.com

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