When play began at Foxwoods earlier this week, there were 412 entrants into the World Poker Tour’s World Poker Finals. On Saturday, the tournament played down to its final 33 players and among the survivors are three PocketFivers who have been highly-successful in live tournaments. Together, they’ve won two WPT tournaments and one WSOP bracelet. Each is now looking to nab the $1.1 million first place prize. Still in the hunt in the Connecticut casino are Jonathan FieryJustice Little, Jon pokertrip Friedberg, and Kevin BeL0WaB0Ve Saul. Play on Sunday will occur until five levels have been completed or nine players remain, whichever comes first. On location at Foxwoods is Court Harrington, Tournament Reporter for PocketFivesLive.com, the premier source for WPT coverage of online poker players.
Sitting with the ninth largest chip stack heading into Day 4 on Sunday is Jonathan FieryJustice Little. He holds 477,000 chips, trailing Jon Jaffe’s leading stack of 1.1 million. He made the final table of three preliminary events during the WPT’s Festa al Lago, piling up a total of over $130,000 in earnings. Little broke out during Season VI of the World Poker Tour and was named the Player of the Year. He won the Mirage Poker Showdown for $1.1 million and took second in the North American Poker Championship at Fallsview for $680,000. He also took seventh in the Gulf Coast Poker Championship for $93,000.Harrington, who has followed Little and other PocketFivers throughout the course of the World Poker Finals, commented, “He has been extremely consistent since he started playing major live tournaments. He seems to make a deep run as often as anyone and he knows what to do once he gets down to the last few tables. Even though he is a young guy, Little has as much, or more, experience deep in major live tournaments than many long-time pros.”
Right behind Little is Jon pokertrip Friedberg, who owns a stack of 449,000. Like Little and Saul, Friedberg is accomplished in live tournament play. He won a $1,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em tournament during the 2006 World Series of Poker, pocketing $526,000 and a bracelet for his efforts; he defeated John "The Razor" Phan heads-up. He finished third in a $1,500 buy-in Pot Limit Omaha tournament during the 2007 WSOP, cashing for $101,000. Finishing ahead of Friedberg in that tournament were fellow PocketFiver Michael BOBCATSPEGAL Spegal and Gavin Smith. All told, he has 12 career WSOP cashes on his poker resume for a total of $737,000.Harrington describes a key hand for Friedberg during play on Day 3: “Jon ran kings into aces, but was lucky enough to win the hand. In tournaments, it often takes a hand going your way like that to propel a player to victory. Jon has the skill set, experience, and determination to take a little good fortune and turn it into a big-time finish.” Friedberg hit kings on both the flop and river to crack Dimitri Haskaris’ pocket aces at Foxwoods.
Sitting with the 31st largest chip stack in the World Poker Finals is Kevin BeL0WaB0Ve Saul, who holds 93,000. Saul took home $1.3 million for winning the Bellagio Cup III, a World Poker Tour event, in 2007. He made the final table of two separate preliminary events during the 2006 World Poker Finals for a combined take of $155,000. Harrington commented on Saul’s ride through this year’s Foxwoods tournament: “The ups and downs for Kevin today were amazing to watch. He went from near the top of the chip counts to all but out, then back to near the top, and then back to almost out. He will be short coming into Day 4 on Sunday, but not nearly as short as he was at points during Day 3 play.”The top ten chip stacks at Foxwoods headed into Day 4 are:
1. Jon Jaffe - 1,100,000
2. Mike Matusow - 1,076,500
3. Tom Nguyen - 870,000
4. Carl Restifo - 720,000
5. Ron Kirsh - 681,000
6. Charlie Marchese - 625,500
7. Dimitri Haskaris - 522,000
8. Larry Greenberg - 519,000
9. Jon Little - 477,000
10. Jon Friedberg - 449,000
Finishing in the money on Saturday was Christian charder Harder, who was eliminated after running A-K into aces, which occurred right after he ran A-Q into Saul’s A-K. Harder pocketed $21,320 for 44th place. He’s ranked 15th on the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings.
PocketFivers eliminated before the money bubble burst included:
Doug dougmanct Mandeville
Randy Randers Haddox
Jeff YoungSupremacy Hakim
Joe ender555 Ebanks
Stay tuned to PocketFivesLive.com for the latest WPT coverage from the World Poker Finals.
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