Day 4 of the WPT Championship event saw Galen Hall take the overall chip lead, finishing the day with 3,438,000 in chips. There were 51 players who returned to the felt on the fourth day, with 15 players left to still battle it out for the WPT Championship title and first place prize money.
Coming out of obscurity, Hall shot to fame on the liver poker circuit at the start of this year after winning the 2011 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure main event for $2.3 million, outlasting a field of 1,560 players that day. Just last week, he also finished runner-up in the EPT Champion of Champions tournament for €25,000. Prior to the two big cashes, Hall had only made two live cashes for around $6,000, although he is no stranger to success in the online poker world, having amassed close to $1 million in profits to date.
When Day 4’s action began, Hall was sitting with a medium sized stack, however, during the day’s play, managed to accumulate chips by eliminating a number of tough players including the likes of Doyle Brunson, Alan Sternberg, Abe Mosseri, and Christian Harder, to build his stack to more then 3 million chips.
Some of the notable players who were eliminated during the day before making the money included WPT Player of the Year frontrunner Andy Frankenberger, Sam Trickett, Billy Baxter, Ryan D’Angelo, 2010 WSOP ME runner-up Joseph Cheong, Justin Smith, Andrew Lichtenberger, and Hafix Khan.
The eliminations continued until there were only 15 players remaining in the field. Doyle Brunson and Dave Ulliott are just two of the players who cashed but were knocked out of the tournament before the end of the day’s play.
On Day 4, due to Frankenberger’s elimination, it means the WPT’s Player of the Year race is now wide open, with WPT Amneville winner Sam El Sayed who finished the second in chips and Shannon Shorr, still in with a shot of winning the WPT POY title.
The remaining 15 runners who will return to the felt to continue action on Day 5 are all guaranteed at least $53,095.
The top ten chip counts heading into Day 5 of the WPT Championship tournament are as follows:
1. Galen Hall – 3,438,000
2. Sam El Sayed – 2,774,000
3. Roger Teska – 2,194,000
4. Scott Seiver – 2,001,000
5. Shannon Shorr – 1,786,000
6. Steven Kelly – 1,674,000
7. Tony Gargano – 1,577,000
8. Ashton Griffin – 1,474,000
9. Nenad Medic – 1,282,000
10. Justin Young – 1,249,000
Some of the bigger poker sites offer WPT poker qualifier tournaments, take a look at Party Poker, which is one of the best options.