Blom Spikes One-Outer To Steal End-of-Day Chip Lead
Day 3 of Event 45: $50,000 Poker Players Championship has come to a close after the third batch of five levels was played out. At the end of the night, 26 competitors bagged and tagged their chips to return for Wednesday's Day 4.
Entering the day, 62 players remained with Andy Bloch leading the way. Bloch kept himself at the top of the pack for most of the day, but slid towards the end of the night before wrapping up with 667,000. Bloch earned his first World Series of Poker gold bracelet earlier this year in Event 7: $1,500 Seven Card Stud.
The day came with plenty of action, but it didn't involve any controversy like last night did (see Part 1 and Part 2). Still, the situation from last night was on a lot of players' minds and it was discussed often throughout the day.
Plenty of notables hit the rail during Day 3, including Matt Hawrilenko, Brian Hastings, Scott Clements, David Benyamine, Jason Mercier and defending champion Brian Rast. Rast was eliminated in a hand against Ben Yu. Joining them on the rail was Matt Glantz, Patrik Antonius and Huck Seed.
On top of the pack at the end of the night was Viktor Blom, but it took a miracle for him to get there. Blom robbed Joe Cassidy of a massive pot in the last few hands of the night by smacking a one-outer on a hand of Pot-Limit Omaha. The pot was worth well over a million and Blom finished on 1.262 million.
Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi will be returning to play on Wednesday as he's still in contention along with his brother Robert Mizrachi. If you remember back to 2010, the year Michael won the event, his brother Robert also made the final table. Those two could be in line for another joint final table here in 2012.
Play is scheduled to resume at 2:00 PM PT on Wednesday and it's going to be extra fun with the money bubble popping for sure. PokerNews will have all of the live coverage from the floor and we hope to have you joining us. Until then, enjoy the rest of our coverage from the 2012 WSOP.