Nguyen Leads Final Table; Duhamel & Benyamine Remain
The 2013 World Series of Poker continued Wednesday with Day 4 of the $50,000 Poker Players' Championship. At 2 p.m. local time, the remaining 26 players of a 132-player field returned to the Amazon Room to play through the money bubble on the way to the final table. It took four and a half levels of play to do it, but now just eight players remain.
Leading the way is Don Nguyen, who bagged up 5,680,000. While he is best position to capture the $1,774,089 first-place prize, he faces some stiff competition in Matthew Ashton (2,996,000), George Danzer (2,868,000), David Benyamine (2,709,000), Minh Ly (2,307,000), Jonathan Duhamel (1,627,000), John Hennigan (1,412,000) and Mike Wattel (810,000).
Obviously those players all had good days, but 18 others did not. John Juanda was the first to leave, but he was soon followed out the door by Joe Hachem, Stephen Chidwick, Greg Mueller, Erick Lindgren, David Bach, Justin Smith, all of who fell in the first level of play.
From there, the eliminations of Mike Leah and Max Pescatori brought about the money bubble. Alas, there would be no bubble boy as two players, Joe Cassidy and Gary Benson, busted at the same time to split 16th-place money, each taking home $55,947.
From there the in-the-money eliminations began to mount and included Troy Burkholder (15th - $111,893), Kevin Song (14th - $128,620), Tommy Hang (13th - $128,620), Bryn Kenney (12th - $147,882) and Huck Seed.
Seed's demise actually came in Level 20 when Seed moved all in for 223,000 from middle position and received a call from Matthew Ashton in the cutoff. The rest of the field folded and the cards were turned up.
Seed: 
Ashton: 
It was a bad spot for Seed, and according to the PokerNews Odds Calculator, he only had a 22.83% chance of surviving the hand with a 4.5% chance of a tie. That meant Ashton would win 72.67% of the time, and that actually increased to 88.18% on the 
flop.
Seed still had a 9.69% chance of catching a jack, but the 
turn saw that drop to 6.82%. The dealer burned one last time and put out the 
. Seed missed and became the 2013 WSOP $50,000 Poker Players' Championship 11th-place finisher.
After Michael Glick and Mike Gorodinsky were sent home in tenth and ninth place respectively, the official final table was set.
The fifth and final day is schedule for 2 p.m. PDT on Thursday, and of course the PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be bring you all the action on the way to determining a new $50,000 Poker Players' Champion.