It has already been quite a year for young Galen Hall having won the 2011 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event for $2,300,000 and now he is in pole position to add a World Poker Tour title to his name as he leads going into the final table of six at the WPT World Championship.
He started Day 5 as the chipleader and ended it the same way, though he had a quieter than usual day and finished with a slender 20,000 chip advantage over WSOP bracelet winner Scott Seiver. They will be joined at the televised final table, held at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, by Justin Young, Tony Gargano, Roger Teska and Farzad Bonyadi, the latter being a triple WSOP bracelet winner.
The plan of action when Day 5 began was to play five 90-minute levels or until the 15 surviving players had been whittled down to the final table of six. Although it took an hour for the first player, Will “The Thrilla” Failla, to be eliminated his exit caused a flurry of activity and David Williams, Steven Kelly, Ashton Griffin and Daniel Alaei quickly followed him to the cashier’s cage and then the rail to watch how this event and the $100,000 Super High Roller would progress.
With Alaei’s exit the remaining 10 players all joined up on one unofficial final table, a table that Nenad Medic only lasted one hand of play on! He found himself being three-bet all on by Teska and calling with QhQd only to see Teska sat there with pocket rockets. No help from the 7c-3h-2d-2c-9h board and Medic was eliminated in tenth place. He was joined on the sidelines just five hands later by Shannon Shorr but it took another 94 hands over almost five hours for the next bustout to take place.
Sam El Sayed, who knew a final table appearance could have bagged him the WPT Player of the Year award, was actually the eighth place finisher. With blinds of 30,000/60,000/5,000a he open-shoved from the cutoff with a pair of five for 325,000 chips and Hall made the call on the button. Once the blinds got out of the way the dealer got to work at putting out one of the most final flops ever, Th-Td-Tc giving Hall quad tens! El Sayed had already shook the hands of his former table mates before the turn and river had been dealt and his elimination handed the Player of the Year award to Andrew Frankenberger.
Three hands later and the 15 starters had been reduced to the final six competitors when David Peters lost a race with ThTs against the KsQh of Seiver when the final board ran out Kd-9d-7d-8c-Kh and the tournament was paused until Friday afternoon, giving the players a day off from the intense action. When play does resume each of them will walk away with no less than $225,654 for their efforts over the past week but the winner will walk away with a staggering $1,618,344.
Final table seat draw and chip count
Seat 1: Galen Hall: 5,095,000
Seat 2: Justin Young: 1,750,000
Seat 3: Tony Gargano: 3,550,000
Seat 4: Roger Teska: 3,600,000
Seat 5: Scott Seiver: 5,075,000
Seat 6: Freddy Bonyadi: 2,470,000
