World Series of 2004 - DAY 3

*WSOP and World Series of Poker (from now on referred to as the Main Event and/or World Series)

Contributed by Mike Paulle

As the clock ran out on the third straight day of six levels each, 278 players remained in action. Over 800 were eliminated in Day 3. Only 53 more and everyone will be in the money. In the continuation of the elite player bloodbath that has been the 2004 World Series, Annie Duke walked out minutes before the 12:30 am level 12 ending. As you may remember half the field played six levels on each of the first two days to get down to the qualifying players that started today. Nearly 1,100 players all started on equal footing at level 7 at noon. Tomorrow the survivors start level 13. It will be an omen for 53 of them because it's pretty likely that they won't get out of that level with any money.

The highlight of the day was a low light for two individuals. It's common in the World Series for the first day chip leader to fail to make the money, but never in Main Event history have two chip leaders fallen from such great heights. Mike Laing started Monday with 129,525 in chips. He dusted every one of those babies off by 12:02 am (about 75 players short of the return of his buy-in). Laing is a volatile player, however, so large chip swings aren't unusual for him. More amazing to me was the loss of 105,075 by a tight player like Teddy Tuil from Israel. Mike could have been caught speeding, but Teddy must have had some awful beats.

As far as PokerStars players are concerned, we started the day with 126 which was 12% of the field. As of the end of the day, 29 PokerStars players remained (10.4%). In any case our numbers might not be much lower than those of the poker celebrities. It's a far shorter list that remains than who hit the door today. Here are some of each:

Still In

Doyle Brunson, Russ Hamilton, Chris Ferguson, Dan Harrington, Erik Seidel, Gus Hansen, Phil Gordon, John Esposito, Junian Gardner, Mike Matusow, Gary Jones, Tomer Benvenisti, James Hoeppner, Casey Kastle, Ron McMillan, Alex Brenes, O'Neil Longson, Paul Westley, Jan Sjavik, Tahoe Andrew, Lee Watkinson, Billy Duarte, Juna Helppi, Blair Rodman, Peter Giordano, Marcel Luske, John Shipley, Al Krux, Dave Ulliott, Gene Timberlake, Matt Lefkowitz, Al Stonum, Patri Friedman, Matt Treasure, Tommy Grimes, Dewey Tomko, Greg Raymer, Carlos Fuentes, Eddie Fishman, Joe Cassidy

Out Today

Phil Hellmuth, Tom McEvoy, Johnny Chan, Robert Varkonyi, Howard Lederer, Amarillo Slim, Kathy Kohlberg, Mel Judah, Barry Greenstein, Brian Haveson, Robert Williamson, Steve Brecher, Kathy Liebert, Ron Stanley, John Cernuto, June Field, Ken Flaton, Bruce Yamron, David Chiu, Danny Dang, Evelyn Ng, Jesse Jones, Carl McKelvey, Phil Laak, Paul Wolfe, Bill Fain, Chris Grigorian, John Inashima, Pat Callahan, George McKeever, Brett Jungblut, Rich Zhu, David Singer, Chris Tsiprailidis, Vasili Lazalou, Barbara Gold, Roy Thung, Debbie Burkhead, Ian Patterson, Ram Vaswani, Barny Boatman, Ross Boatman, Jack McClelland, Kenny and Stan Goldstein, Jerri Thomas, Ron Rose, Dutch Boyd, Scott Fischman, David Plastik, Anthony Tran, Can Hua, Abe Mosseri, Paul Testud, Surinder Sunar, Gary Pollack, Aiden Bennett and many more.

With 278 players left it's a race to the final table with the great many unknowns well in the lead.

PokerStars Players' Chip Counts

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