Ashton Vying for 2nd $50K PPC Title as 19 Players Head to Day 4
Matthew Ashton from Liverpool, United Kingdom sits in second place after three long days of poker action with 19 players remaining in the $50,000 Players Championship, the event he managed to win just two years ago. A total of 12 players will cash in this event and currently it’s last year’s fourth-place finisher Abe Mosseri who leads the way with 1,201,000.
The third day of play started with 47 players, among which were two former winners in David Bach and Michael Mizrachi. Neither managed to advance, as Bach lost a big pot to Ashton in razz before busting out, while Mizrachi got felted by Ashton. In limit hold’em, Mizrachi held ace-ten of hearts for his tournament life, but that was no match for Ashton’s ace-queen of spades.
Other big names that exited on Day 3 included last year’s runner-up Brandon Shack-Harris, start-of-the-day chip leader Scott Seiver, David Benyamine, and Phil Galfond. The last man in that group hit the rail in arguably one of the craziest hands of the day when he hit quad tens on seventh street in Stud 8 versus Matt Glantz, who made quad queens on seventh! However, this hand didn’t help Glantz too much as he starts Day 4 as one of the short stacks.
Seven players will go home empty-handed tomorrow, and Jason Mercier is among the shorter stacks heading into the penultimate day. We caught up with the three-time bracelet winner at the completion of the day.
“I’m happy to still be in," said Mercier, who busted out two spots from the money last year. "I wish had a few more chips and I peaked at 900,000 today and bagged up 477,000. Anything can happen tomorrow, we’re seven away from the money so hopefully I get to make the money for the first time in this event and make a run.”
Play restarts tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. PST and six finalists will remain after tomorrow’s action. Here are the chip counts heading into Day 4:
End-of-Day 3 Chip Counts
| Place | Name | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Abe Mosseri | 1,201,000 |
| 2 | Matthew Ashton | 1,068,000 |
| 3 | John Racener | 1,030,000 |
| 4 | John Monnette | 948,000 |
| 5 | Mike Gorodinsky | 945,000 |
| 6 | Justin Smith | 873,000 |
| 7 | Chau Giang | 839,00 |
| 8 | Ben Sulsky | 740,000 |
| 9 | Joe Cassidy | 589,000 |
| 10 | David “ODB” Baker | 540,000 |
| 11 | Ben Yu | 537,000 |
| 12 | Shawn Buchanan | 533,000 |
| 13 | Jean-Robert Bellande | 532,000 |
| 14 | Chris Klodnicki | 482,000 |
| 15 | Jason Mercier | 477,000 |
| 16 | Dan Smith | 441,000 |
| 17 | Dan Kelly | 428,000 |
| 18 | Matt Glantz | 362,000 |
| 19 | Lamar Wilkinson | 157,000 |