Eleven gold rings have been awarded at Choctaw Casino Resort, and the Main Event will play to a winner today to conclude the Series.
From a starting field of 1,565 entries, just 20 remain in the $1,675 Main Event. Buffalo native Andy Spears leads the field, and he returns for Day 3 with 5,400,000 chips and more than 100 big blinds. Others still in the mix include Justin Liberto (1,775,000), Craig Varnell (1,750,000), 2013 WSOP National Champion Jonathan Hilton (1,120,000), Andy Philachack (975,000), and Jimmy Tran (375,000). Nearly $400,000 will be awarded to the winner today.
Click here to read more about the run to the finish.
While the Main Event was playing deeper into the money, Event #12 was taking flight on the other side of the room. The $365 One Day event drew a big field of 443 entries, putting a prizepool of $132,900 up for grabs. It took about 13 hours of play to whittle that field down to a winner, and Amanda Daniels outlasted everyone to earn her first gold ring and the top prize of more than $29,000. It's a career-best score for the high school principal from Plano, and a recap of her victory will be published later today.
Click here to see the full results from Event #12.
The points race for this Circuit stop was also decided on Sunday. With 75 points earned over the last 12 days, TJ Thondup is the Casino Champion for Choctaw. Thondup, a part-time player from Santa Fe, won his second-career gold ring in Event #5, defeating a field of 279 players to collect the top prize of more than $20,000. He went on to notch a fifth-place finish in Event #9, and those two results are good enough to earn him the crown. For his work this week, Thondup secures one of the precious seats in the WSOP Global Casino Championship.
Steven Snyder is still alive in the Main Event, and he's the only player who can match Thondup's point total. He would need to win in order to hit 75 points, making his finish irrelevant to Thondup, since a victory in the Main would earn Snyder an automatic bid. Here's how the leaderboard looks right now with Snyder's result still pending:
1st place: TJ Thondup - 75 points
2nd place: Kevin Haines - 72.5 points
3rd place: John Holley - 60 points
4th place: Marshall White - 57.5 points
5th place: James Hutton - 57.5 points
The Global Casino Championship is an invitation-only tournament with a minimum prize pool of $1,000,000. A pair of free seats, valued at $10,000 each, go to the winner of the Main Event and to the player who earns the most total points across the 12 ring events at each Circuit stop.
For more information on the 2015/2016 WSOP Circuit, click the links below.
