World Series of Poker down to 204 players entering Day 6

So far throughout the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event players have not been shy about getting their money into the middle, and the starting field of 7,319 players is now down to just 204! As tournament director Jack Effel said earlier, “They’re just playing fast… They don’t have to go broke now; they are choosing to go broke now!”

This strategy is a testament to the wealth of poker information that is now available even to the most casual player. Poker players are no longer trying to cash in a tournament; they now realize the real money is in winning the tournament, or at the very least making the final table. So, we’ve lost that huge group of players who would turn into total rocks as the bubble approached, or as the payouts increased-there are still a lot, but not as many as there used to be.

With less skillful players implementing an all-or-nothing strategy it’s really no surprise that we have had many top tournament players make deep runs in the WSOP Main Event. With the chip-leader, Evan Lamprea, sitting on just over 3.5 million chips players like Theo Jorgensen, Alexander Kostritsyn and two time WSOP Main Event winner Johnny Chan are all in great shape in the Top 10 with over 2.5 million chips.

Other big names still in the field include:

• James Carroll - 1.982 million chips
• Mike “The Grinder” Mizrachi - 1.793 million chips
• Johnny Lodden - 1.625 million chips
• JP Kelly - 1.474 million chips
• Christian “Charder” Harder - 1.263 million chips
• Adam “Roothlus” Levy - 1.147 million chips
• Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond - 1.025 million chips
• David Baker - 951k chips
• Jean-Robert Bellande - 946k chips
• Juha Helpi - 555k chips
• Todd “Dan Druff” Witteles - 380k chips
• David Benyamine - 353k chips
• Theo Tran - 322k chips
• Eric Baldwin - 292k chips
• Jesper Hougaard - 289k chips
• Hasan Habib - 266k chips
• Matt Keiokan - 254k chips
• Robert Mizrachi - 224k chips
• Russel Rosenblum - 152k chips

My players to watch on Day 6 are Johnny Chan, JP Kelly, and David Baker. Chan has been near the top of the leader-board since Day; Kelly is a top online poker player and extremely dangerous with chips; and Baker always seems to go deep into tournaments when he has chips to play with.

When play resumes on Thursday the remaining participants will find themselves in level 21 with 8,000/16,000 blinds and a 2,000 chip ante. So, don’t expect the action to slow down very much on Day 6, with players having to put in 42,000 chips a round!