The 2017 World Series of Poker Main Event is at its final stage and the final table is already assembled. The nine poker pros left on it at the beginning of the day were dominated by Scott Blumstein who continued holding the chip lead the whole day. At the end of the day only seven of them survived.
From the very beginning of the final table, Blumstein has been the unofficial leader and there was only one other poker pro who managed to come close to him. That was John Hesp from the UK, but after the initial three sessions of the final table play, he was left behind. Blumstein propelled way ahead of his rivals for the big prize and collected almost half of the chips present on the table. There were as many as seven poker players left on the table at this point and he was 100 million chips ahead of them.
Speaking of dramatic game play, John Hesp will go down in history with his Thursday night performance. He plummeted after the beginning of the final table play, even though he was following the leader closely. Hesp had gathered almost 2.5 times as many chips as the poker player on the third place and he was very confident in his attempts to topple Blumstein from the first place. John Hesp’s good fortune did not last long enough, and a crucial hand of cards threw him way back.
Blumstein had pocket aces against the A-10 which Hesp produced. This led to the leader gaining even bigger lead after he received more chips and amassed a total of 157,000,000 in chips. Hesp was sent back to the fifth position with no hopes of getting back at the top of the leaderboard. He won the first hand of the final table play with a bluff, by showing K-9 on a 10-8-2 flop. He also dominated the following two hands.
The fourth hand brought the elimination of Ben Lamb, who had played promising throughout this whole Main Event. He won $1,000,000 for his deep run in the championship and was eliminated in ninth place. At the beginning of the first day of the final table, Scott Blumstein had 97,250,000, whereas John Hesp had 85,700,000. The third poker player was Benjamin Pollak with his 35,175,000 in chips.
This was also the eighth day of the World Series of Poker Main Event and it commenced Thursday evening at 5:30 p.m. at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where all days of the events take place. Day 7 had ended Monday night with 1:07:01 left in Level 37, with blinds at 400,000/800,000 and a 100,000 ante. At the moment the final table looks like this: Scott Blumstein has 178,200,000, Benjamin Pollak amassed 77,525,000, Bryan Piccioli collected 35,850,000, John Hesp finished with 22,625,000, Daniel Ott made 16,350,000, Damian Salas earned 15,475,000, and Antoine Saout claimed 14,550,000 in chips.
