Andersson Leads Again, Mizzi, Wheeler and Van den Bijgaart Still in Contention
Day 3 of the World Poker Tour Amsterdam Main Event started with still 65 players in contention for a first-place prize of �215,000. With the tournament only paying 45 players, 20 unfortunate souls needed to leave the tournament empty handed while the others would take home a guaranteed �6,000.
Starting out as the chip leader was Dutch pro Joep "pappe_ruk" van den Bijgaart. He would drastically increase his lead early on when he coolered Luke Marsh in a huge set-over-set pot. Van den Bijgaart's set of kings made Marsh's set of jacks useless, and the Brit made his exit while Van den Bijgaart started building a chip castle with bricks worth a combined 700,000, almost twice what any other player had at that point.
Canadian high roller Andrew Chen had already departed by that time, falling victim to Louis Salter in an ordinary coinflip situation. Another familiar face to bust well before the money was reigning WPT Player of the Year Anthony Zinno, and his departure meant the record of having three WPT titles would not be broken here in Amsterdam. As such, Carlos Mortensen, Gus Hansen and Zinno will share the record a bit longer.
Govert Metaal (flush versus full house), Sylvain Loosli (queens cracked by nines making a flush) and [Removed:17] (jacks to kings and aces) also hit the rail before Senh Ung would eventually become the bubble. Ung's ace-king didn't improve against David Hudson's queens, and afterward the tournament entered the money-stage.
As usual, the short stacks got moving after qualifying for some guaranteed money. Simon Trumper (ace-four against sevens, 43rd for �6,000), Rumen Nanev (five-six suited against eights, 41st for �6,000), World Series of Poker runner-up Felix Stephensen (sixes into queens, 40th for �6,000), Steve O'Dwyer (ace-nine beaten by king-eight, 31st for �6,500), MCOP and EPT champ Noah Boeken (flush versus full house, 30th for �6,500), and EPT champion Salvatore Bonavena (eights against queens, 22nd for �8,000) were just some of the famous players busting in the money.
Despite the loss of familiar faces, even more made it through to Day 4. Leading the way is Day 1a chip leader Fredrik Andersson with just over 1.4 million. Day 3 chip leader Joep van den Bijgaart is in second with over a million, while Sorel Mizzi is the only other player with a seven-figure stack holding 1,007,000. Louis Salter (880,000), Jason Wheeler (584,000), and Scott Davies (211,000) are also amongst the final 16. The two Van den Berg's are the short stacks �� Erik van den Berg will bring 154,000 when the tournament resumes tomorrow at 2 p.m. while Thierry van den Berg bagged 138,000.
On Day 4 of the WPT Amsterdam, the final 16 players will play down to the final six players, who'll then play the live streamed final table on Saturday. PokerNews will again be on site, so check back tomorrow for all the updates of the penultimate day of one of the biggest poker tournaments in Dutch poker history.