Vivek Rajkumar Aims For Back-to-Back WPT Titles

WPT North American Poker Championship, Day 3 Recap

By BJ Nemeth

|:img:6172,R:|Twenty-six days ago, Vivek Rajkumar won the WPT Borgata Poker Open at the age of 22. Now he finds himself with the chip lead at the final three tables of the WPT North American Poker Championship. No player in history has ever won back-to-back WPT titles, but Rajkumar is poised to do just that.

It won’t be an easy path, as the next four players on the leaderboard are also accomplished pros:

1. Vivek “Flog” Rajkumar – 1,080,000
2. Gavin Smith – 979,000
3. Matt Matros – 943,000
4. Kathy Liebert – 879,000
5. Erik Seidel – 851,000

|:img:6213,R:|While Rajkumar is going for his piece of history, former WPT Player of the Year Gavin Smith is aiming for his first major poker victory on his native Canadian soil. Smith won the WPT Mirage Poker Showdown in Season IV, on his way to winning POY honors that year.

Matt Matros is a columnist for Card Player Magazine, and finished third in the 2004 WPT World Championship.

|:img:6209,L:|Kathy Liebert has won more money in live poker tournaments than any other woman in history. That includes Annie Duke (who won $2 million in the 2004 WSOP Tournament of Champions) and Annette Obrestad (who won a little more than $2 million in the 2007 WSOP Europe Main Event). Liebert tops them both with more than $4.5 million in earnings. Liebert was the first woman to make a WPT final table (back in Season I), and she’s hoping to become the first woman to win an open WPT event.

|:img:6203,R:|Erik Seidel has earned more than $9 million in his live tournament career, including eight WSOP bracelets and his first WPT title in Foxwoods back in April. A definite future poker Hall of Famer, there’s not much more that needs to be said about Seidel.

Yes, there are 22 other players still in the hunt for the final table, and the odds are good that more than one of them will make it. But right now the path to this WPT title goes through the top five.

Day 3 started with 99 players, and a little less than half (45) finished in the money. Two players busted on the verge of the money bubble (Mike “Timex” McDonald in 47th and Steve Sung in 46th), so there was no need for hand-to-hand play — effectively, there was no money bubble. The close finish was particularly painful for Sung, who is less than $2,000 away from reaching the coveted $1 million mark in career WPT earnings.

Day 4 begins tomorrow (Wednesday) at 12:00 noon ET, and play will continue until they reach the final six players, who will return Thursday for the televised WPT final table. Return to WorldPokerTour.com for complete live coverage, with hand-by-hand coverage starting with the final two tables, along with chip counts, photos, and video interviews with Amanda Leatherman.