WSOP Europe / Dave Allan / 30 September 2009 / Leave a comment

Day 3 at the WSOPE main event saw the bubble burst and the remaining 36 players rejoice as they made the money, a guaranteed £21,142. A WSOPE bracelet and a huge £801,000 first place prize will be firmly in the minds of the remaining players as the finishing line appears on the horizon. Matt Hawrilenko is the current chip leader and, with his huge 701,500 chip stack, he is likely to be a tough nut to crack in the next two days.

While the Day 4 players look forward to a pay day of at least double their original buy in, Betfair Poker's John Tabatabai will be feeling the pain of being the bubble boy this morning. John suffered an ugly bad beat after getting all his chips into the pot with Ah,Ad. Peter Gould made the call with 7s,7d. Just as it seemed the Betfair pro' would double-up, the dealer dealt a fatal blow of 7c,Js,Th on the flop. Neither turn or river could help Tabatabai and he was eliminated in 37th place. If you suffer a bad beat in your usual online game today then spare a thought for John Tabatabai's £10,000 WSOPE elimination.

Elsewhere Praz Bansi continued his consistent main event form by ending the day in 3rd place. Bansi has been towards the top of the chip count ladder throughout the tournament and must be short odds to reach the latter stages. Further down the chip counts the stacks get a little smaller but, arguably, the names get bigger! Local boys John Kabbaj and Keith "The Camel" Hawkins are both in the top ten with Ram Vaswani and Daniel Negreanu hot on their heels. Football fans will notice that former Manchester United, Spurs and England striker Teddy Sheringham's name is prominent amongst the remaining players too. Should Sheringham go on to win the bracelet here it would be one of the most sensational stories of any World Series to date. Doyle Brunson fans needn't worry, "Texas Dolly" is still in the mix too.

The top ten players and their chip counts going into Day 4 look like this:

Matt Hawrilenko - 701500
Steven Fung - 648000
Praz Bansi - 471300
Arnaud Mattern - 469500
Barry Shulman - 452500
John Kabbaj - 448500
Peter Gould - 409000
Eric Liu - 367500
Sandor Demjan - 367500
Keith Hawkins - 330500

Day 4 starts after lunch today. Follow all the action, as it happens, on our WSOPE LIVE UPDATES AND CHIP COUNTS page.