Leading up to this Main Event final table in July, Ofer Zvi Stern was one of the more aggressive players late on Day 7, using a “kill or be killed” strategy that saw him accumulate a nearly 30,000,000-chip second place stack coming into Sunday night’s November Nine restart. Stern kept up his aggression Sunday, playing a few sizable pots with some of the other big-stacked players, including Neil Blumenfield, who was involved in a few pre-flop leveling wars with Stern.

None of those hands altered Stern’s standing coming into Monday’s six-handed restart, though, as he more or less stayed near the 30,000,000 mark and returned for Day 2 of the final table still second in chips. After the elimination of Tom Cannuli on the second hand of the night, the pressure of the short stack shifted to Josh Beckley, as Stern, Blumenfield, and Max Steinberg were all hovering near the 40 big blind mark.

That logjam didn’t last long, though, as the 98th hand at this final table brought the first all-in and double, as the previous all-in encounters resulted in short-stack eliminations. In a blind-versus-blind encounter, Stern announced himself all-in from the small blind and after he re-checked his cards, Beckley snap-called in the big blind and tabled As Ah. Stern held Ts 9s and, for the second time, someone was at risk for their tournament life with pocket aces.

Pocket aces didn’t hold the first time, but they did the second, as Beckley held through the 7d 5d 2c flop and then locked up his double when the 3s fell on the turn. The river bricked out and Beckley, who had been patiently working a short stack for the better part of the last two days, was suddenly playing just shy of 30,000,000. Stern, on the other hand, was cut down to just 18,225,000, his lowest standing in recent memory.

With the high blinds and antes costing players just over 1,500,000 per orbit, Stern went card dead after that double-up, dropping below the 20 big blind mark over the next few hands and eventually getting down to just 15 big blinds.

Those 15 bigs more or less got into the middle in the 121st hand, when Stern bet 11,500,000 from under the gun, leaving himself just 425,000 behind. Blumenfield moved all-in after the table folded to him and Stern called for the rest of his stack only to see that he was in big trouble, as Blumenfield held Ac Ks to Stern’s Ac Jh.

The 7h 5s 3d flop kept Blumenfield’s Big Slick in the lead and Stern was officially drawing dead after the Kd spiked on the turn. The Qd completed the board and Stern’s elimination was confirmed. After being one of the more talked-about players leading up to this final table with his aggressive and unconventional play, and the most talked about player during Sunday’s ESPN broadcast where he tanked time and time again, Stern bowed out in 5th place, making $1,911,423 for his WSOP Main Event run.