In Sun Geoum takes the biggest stack into Day 4 of the WSOP Main Event.

Late Saturday night in the 2018 World Series of Poker Main Event, 1,182 players stood cheering the elimination of Matthew Hopkins in 1,183rd-place. His elimination burst the bubble and sent the remaining players into the money.

It also ended Day 3 and In Sun Geoum bagged up 1,696,000, good enough for the chip lead. Right behind him is Frank Flowers with 1,624,000. The only woman to ever make the Main Event final table also finished with a top 10 stack. Barbara Enright, who famously finished fifth in 1995, ended the day with 1,260,000.

The day began with 2,786 players still believing they had a chance at taking home the $8.8 million first-place prize money but over the course of just over ten hours of play, 1,604 players were sent packing.

The math behind that is somewhat staggering. Every 23 seconds a player had their Main Event run with nothing but a story.

Included in that group were Jason Mercier, Greg Merson, Matt Waxman, Matt Berkey, JC Tran, Tom Marchese, and Steffen Sontheimer.

Phil Hellmuth, who began the day by showing up almost a full hour late and was dealing with some controversy for his actions in one of the final hands of play on Day 2C, was eliminated by Jans Arends. Hellmuth was all-in preflop with AsKc and Arends called holding Ad9d. The flop and turn were both clean for Hellmuth but the river was the 9h and he was eliminated well before the money. His elimination seemed to go over well with other players watching the live coverage on TV while playing in other Las Vegas poker rooms.

There are still a number of prominent players still in contention and now hoping to turn their guaranteed cash into something better. Ben Yu (1,040,000), Paul Volpe (989,000), Chris Moorman (969,000), Chino Rheem (904,000), Phil Ivey (827,000) and Kelly Minkin (795,000) all finished with a top 100 stack.

Another player who bagged up chips is four-time World Poker Tour champion Darren Elias. While he’s had an impressive amount of success on the WPT, this marks the first WSOP cash of Elias’ career.

“It’s good. I’ve kind of had a curse in this event, so to finally make the money after 10 tries feels good,” said Elias. “I think it’s just variance and over the years I probably haven’t played my best in this event. I’ve had bad players play hands well against me and me not play hands well.”

Action resumes at 11 am Las Vegas time and will play a full five two-hour levels.

Top 10 Chip Counts

  1. In Sun Geoum – 1,696,000
  2. Frank Flowers – 1,624,000
  3. Alexander Wong – 1,431,000
  4. Samuel Bernabeu – 1,418,000
  5. Eric Sfez – 1,390,000
  6. Michael Lavenburg – 1,356,000
  7. Julius Malzanini – 1,292,000
  8. Alexandro Tricarico – 1,289,000
  9. Kaylen Lebaron – 1,284,000
  10. Barbara Enright – 1,260,000