With 14 Players Left, Kevin MacPhee Leads WPT Bellagio Elite Poker Championship Main Event

The Season XVI WPT Bellagio Elite Poker Championship Main Event is down to 14 players and action will recommence at 12 p.m. local time today at Bellagio in Las Vegas. The remaining players are guaranteed $17,111, with a payday of $378,879 up top for the winner. Included in the winner’s share is a $15,000 seat to the season-ending WPT Tournament of Champions.

Kevin MacPhee (pictured) leads the pack with a stack of 715,500 in chips. He’s more than 200,000 ahead of Sean Winter’s second-place stack of 511,000, then it’s Cary Katz (422,000), Danny Qutami (418,000), and Jim Collopy (329,500) rounding out the top five.

For MacPhee, a victory would give him another major title to his long poker résumé. As he’s already won an EPT title and a WSOP gold bracelet, MacPhee could complete live poker’s Triple Crown achievement if he wins a World Poker Tour title. A win would also push MacPhee to more than $6 million in live tournament earnings, according to HendonMob.com, and he’d become the first WSOP Europe Main Event champion to win a WPT title.

Two players in the field will be looking to move closer to a second WPT title, and those players are Justin Young and Ryan Van Sanford. Young brings to Day 4 a stack of 157,500, and Van Sanford has a stack of 122,000.

Julian Parmann, who began Day 3 as the chip leader, and Allen Pock are the two shortest stacks left in the field, sitting on 47,500 and 36,500, respectively. When the players return for Day 4, blinds will be 2,500-5,000 with a 500 ante.

The goal for Day 4 is to reach the final table of six. With the Action Clock, provided by Protection Poker, in play, things could move fairly quick. Under the rules of the Action Clock, players have 30 seconds to act for each decision, but they can use 30-second time extension chips for extra time if they still have them.

Once again, the final 14 players are guaranteed $17,111 with a first-place prize of $378,879 up for the taking. A trip to the final table of six will earn players $60,499 in guaranteed prize money.

In addition to the $10,400 buy-in WPT Bellagio Elite Poker Championship Main Event, the festival schedule features a $25,000 buy-in WPT Bellagio High Roller that kicks off Saturday, May 5. The first two days of this event will run May 5-6 and the field will play down to the final table of six. After the final table is reached on May 6, the players will break to return on May 25 to play out the final table at the brand new, state-of-the-art Esports Arena Las Vegas at Luxor Hotel & Casino. This event will be filmed for television broadcast and the winner will receive a luxurious Hublot watch. For more on this event, click here.

As always, keep it locked right here to WPT.com for continued coverage of the World Poker Tour.

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