WSOP Main Event Down to 79 Players

BLUFF Staff | July 13, 2008 at 8:47 am

Day 5 of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event is complete and the field has been reduced to 79 players.

The day began with 189 players and Jeremy Joseph leading the way with 2.1 million chips. Joseph moved up to 3.2 million over the course of the day, but was surpassed by six players including Mark Ketteringham, who ended the day with the chip lead at 5.7 million.

In third place on the leaderboard is Tiffany Michelle, a member of the poker media and one of just two women remaining in the 2008 Main Event. Michelle began with just over 900,000 chips and ended with 3.8 million.

“[Day 5] was great,” Michelle said. “Very smooth, very easy and no crazy highs or lows.”

This is Michelle’s first cash in a major tournament and she has been attracting plenty of attention from fans and media alike. After bagging her huge chip stack at the end of the night, Michelle posed for photos with several onlookers and shared a few words with her good friend Maria Ho, the top female finisher in the 2007 Main Event.

Phil Hellmuth had an up-and-down day and ended with around 720,000, far behind the average chip stack of just over 1.7 million. Hellmuth will begin Day 6 with a one-orbit penalty, the result of a confrontation he had with Cristian Dragomir at the end of the Day 5. Dragomir called Hellmuth’s pre-flop reraise with 10-4 and showed it after forcing Hellmuth to fold A-K on a ten high flop. Hellmuth flew off the handle and began berating Dragomir, calling the Romanian, “the worst player in history,” among other things. Hellmuth continued for several minutes before tournament supervisors determined he’d gone too far and issued the 11-time bracelet winner with the penalty.

Mike Matusow played at the feature table throughout Day 5 and will return tomorrow with over one million chips. Other notables returning on Day 6 include Alex Outhred, Kido Pham, Victor Ramdin, Matt Matros, Peter Neff, Adam Levy, Owen Crowe, Chino Rheem, Brandon Cantu and Dave Benefield.

Big name pros Gus Hansen and Allen Cunningham were eliminated on Day 5, much to the disappointment of the crowd here at the Rio. Also eliminated on Day 5 were WSOP bracelet holders Hoyt Corkins, Jeff Madsen and Mark Vos, the latter of whom busted out on the last hand of the day when his A-K ran into the pocket aces of Dennis Phillips.

Day 6 begins on Sunday at noon PT and as always WorldSeriesofPoker.com will have up-to-the-minute live updates, chip counts and a photo gallery from the 2008 Main Event.