WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas Day 3 Update

Day 3 of the 2023 WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas concluded on Sunday 17th December in the Encore Ballroom. All 480 players who began the day were in the prize money and guaranteed to secure at least $18,700 for the two days of poker they had played up until that point. All will have their eyes on the much bigger first prize of $5,678,000 or at least hoping for a place on the 6-handed final table and a seven-figure payout.

These are the remaining prizes being played for.

Five 90-minute levels were played on day three and by the end of the session just 132 remained. The overnight chip leader is Naj Ajez, who only claimed the lead with a few minutes left to play. The Australian won a massive pot of over 11m chips, the biggest so far in the tournament with A♠K♦ versus the Q♦Q♣ of Maxine Chilaud. He was one of three players to post a stack of over 10m chips. Artur Martirosian on 10,930,000 and Andres Campero on 10,535,000 lie in secind and third places respectively.

Although 30 former WPT Main Event champions started the day, only eight of those remained by the end of the day. The highest placed former champion is the ACR sponsored pro Chris Moorman in 9th place with 7,120,000. Of the four former WSOP Main Event winners who started the day, only Joe Cada made it to the end of play, as one of the shortest stacks left with just 715,000. When day four gets underway the blinds will be at 30,000-60,000, which will give Joe just under 12 big blinds and a huge task to get back into contention.

Both the Unibet sponsored Pros David Lappin and Dara O’Kearney didn’t progress past the first few levels. Dara O’Kearney was eliminated within the first hour for a min-cash, while his Chip Race co-presenter managed to ladder a few places further up the prize money tree.

In addition to Chris Moorman, there are still a few other British players who made it to the end of the day. These include former WPT champions Jack Hardcastle and Roberto Romanello. High stakes player Ben Heath and double GUKPT champion Stuart Rutter also made it through to day four. Scotsman Fraser MacIntyre has also made it through to the fourth day with just under 1.5m chips.

End of Day 3 chip counts of the top 10 and other selected players

Play resumed for day 4 at 12pm local time on Monday 18th December, with a further three days to go after this one until the eventual winner emerges.