At the end of Day 3 of the World Poker Tour’s Festa al Lago tournament, 34 players remain. The Bellagio tournament will award $1.4 million to its winner and still in the hunt are about a dozen PocketFivers, including Bertrand ElkY Grospellier and Joe JoeSebok Sebok (pictured), who sit with the third and fourth largest chip stacks, respectively. Also in the hunt are Scott BigRiskky Clements and Bryan badbeatninja Devonshire, who hold top 15 chips stacks. Play resumes at 12:00 Noon Pacific Time on Friday and the six-handed final table will be held on Sunday. In the meantime, let’s check out how PocketFivers fared on Day 3 at the Festa al Lago.
Holding the third largest chip stack at the Bellagio is Bertrand ElkY Grospellier. He is the proud owner of 1.1 million chips, just behind Ryan Fair’s leading stack of 1.3 million. Grospellier is a member of Team PokerStars Pro and won the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for $2 million. He finished second in the European Poker Tour’s Copenhagen stop in 2007 for over $400,000 and finished 370th in the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event, banking $28,950. ElkY placed 21st in the 2008 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker Main Event, one of four five-figure paydays for the Frenchman during that tournament series.
Holding 51,000 fewer chips than Grospellier is Joe Sebok. He has been consistently atop the leader board at the Festa al Lago since play began on Monday and is in a prime position to make his first final table on the World Poker Tour. Sebok notched a pair of final table appearances in his first WSOP back in 2005, taking eighth in a $5,000 Pot Limit Hold’em tournament for $33,700 and finishing fifth in a $5,000 Limit Hold’em event for $75,860. All told, he has 13 career WSOP and Circuit Event cashes for a total of $207,092.
Joe ender555 Ebanks is number six in the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings. His PLB score is the fifth best and he’s 12th in the Pro Poll. At the Bellagio, Ebanks owns the ninth largest chip stack in the room with 595,000. In March of this year, Ebanks placed fifth in the Full Tilt Poker $750K Guaranteed for $33,000 and also won the PokerStars $100 rebuy and Full Tilt $65K Guaranteed for $21,000 apiece. In August, Ebanks made the final table of three weekend major tournaments in the same day. In the month of September, he piled up $85,000 in tournaments that are tracked for the Rankings.
Scott BigRiskky Clements (pictured) will hold the 11th largest chip stack when play resumes with 552,000. He’s best known for his superior Omaha abilities and has two WSOP bracelets to his name. The first came by winning a $3,000 Omaha High-Low Split event in 2006 for over $300,000. He followed that up in 2007 by taking down a $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha tournament for nearly $200,000. Three of his four cashes during the 2008 WSOP were in Omaha tournaments.On the World Poker Tour, Clements won the 2007 North American Poker Championship for a healthy $1.4 million payday. PocketFivesLive.com Tournament Reporter Court Harrington, who is not providing WPT coverage of the Festa al Lago for the site, but is at the Bellagio, told us, “Scott doesn't play in all of the tournaments, but his record speaks for itself. He has a firm grasp on what it takes to get it done at major tournaments and is once again deep and in a good spot to compete for the title.”
Also making a splash and holding the 15th largest chip stack is PocketFiver Bryan badbeatninja Devonshire. He finished second in the WPT’s World Poker Challenge, which was held in March, taking home $271,625. He also finished 12th in the most recent WPT Championship, pocketing $131,910. During the 2007 World Series of Poker, he finished second in a $1,500 buy-in Omaha High-Low Split Eight or Better event, piling up $140,336. Online, he took third in the Super Tuesday on PokerStars back in February for $47,400.
On Devonshire’s play, Harrington added, “At Bellagio Main Events, Devo has a streak of always making it to at least Day 3; that is still intact plus some in this tournament. He is in the middle of the pack going into Day 4, but is comfortable playing with a medium-sized stack and could quickly emerge as one of the chip leaders late in the day.”
PocketFivers who successfully navigated Day 3 include:
3. Bertrand ElkY Grospellier, 1,151,000
4. Joe JoeSebok Sebok, 1,100,000
9. Joe ender555 Ebanks, 595,000
11. Scott BigRiskky Clements, 552,000
14. Johanes Busto_Soon Van Til, 486,000
15. Bryan badbeatninja Devonshire, 485,000
18. Andrew Good2cu Robl, 400,000
21. Isaac Mr. Menlo Baron, 325,000
22. Justin ZeeJustin Bonomo, 300,000
23. Adam Roothlus Levy, 298,000
24. Jamie thecronic420 Rosen, 291,000
32. Blake Balla-B13 Cahail, 173,000
The top 10 chip stacks overall headed into Friday’s play include some of the top names in the poker world:
1. Ryan Fair,1,331,000
2. Will Mietz, 1,217,000
3. Bertrand Grospellier, 1,151,000
4. Joe Sebok, 1,100,000
5. Nenad Medic, 925,000
6. Osmin Dardon, 703,000
7. Steve Fiorentini, 686,000
8. Brad Booth, 616,000
9. Joe Ebanks, 595,000
10. Nam Le, 557,000
Cashing in the Festa al Lago was Matt All In at 420 Stout, who finished in 35th place for $26,645. Play on Friday is scheduled to run until five levels have been completed or until six players remain, whichever comes first. We’ll have more for you on Saturday right here on PocketFives.com.
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