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BRETT MURRAY BULLIES HIS WAY TO THE CHIP LEAD IN THE THUNDER VALLEY MAIN EVENT

Only 9 remain the $151,145 top prize and a seat in the Global Casino Championship on the line
Sep 17 2018 04:56 AM EST
BRETT MURRAY BULLIES HIS WAY TO THE CHIP LEAD IN THE THUNDER VALLEY MAIN EVENT

16 September 2018 (Lincoln, Calif.) – While 104 players started the day in the World Series of Poker Circuit Thunder Valley $1,700 Main Event, the day would finish with just nine players. Leading the pack at the final table is circuit regular Brett Murray who used relentless aggression on the final table bubble to amass a massive stack, giving him over a million chip lead over the rest of the pack. Also making it to the final table is the likes of Day 1A chip leader Marlon Nonales who made the final table of Event #1 in this series as well. He'll come into Day 3 with 710,000 chips. 

Coming into the final day second in chips will be Viet Tran who made a strong performance on his first day of play, getting off to a hot start and his play has continued to carry him all the way to this final table. He'll bring 2,335,000 into the last day, but will still be over a million chips behind Murray. 

Plenty of players dropped today before the money bubble burst though including the likes of Heinz Schluter, Alex Greenblatt, Lee Markholt, Hafiz Khan, Kevin O'Donnell, and Alan Cutler to name a few. Hafiz Khan, one of the former champions of this event, was taken out early in the day when he moved in with ace-ten against pocket kings and pocket queens. He couldn't find a way to win any piece of the pot and was sent to the rail without a payday. 

But there were also plenty of notables who did make it into the money, such as Steven Tabb, Ian Steinman, Allen Kessler, Amir Lehavot, Jose Cervantes, Dylan Wilkerson, JC Tran and Michael Pearson just to name a few. Wilkerson made it the furthest of that bunch but was eventually done in he ran tens into aces to bust in 12th place for $11,311. 

For a full list of results up to this point, click here.  

The final ten will return on Monday at 12 p.m. where they will play down to a winner. Play ended right at the end of level 26 on Day 2, so players will return for the final day starting right at the top of level 27 with blinds of 25,000/50,000 with and ante of 5,000. Here's a look at how the final ten stack up: 

Seat 1: Brett Murray - 3,500,000 (70 bb)
Seat 2: Paul Richardson - 1,635,000 (33 bb)
Seat 3: Adam Duong - 825,000 (17 bb)
Seat 4: Tommy Chen - 600,000 (12 bb)
Seat 5: Jason Mayer - 720,000 (14 bb)
Seat 6: Eyyal Altar - 1,215,000 (24 bb)
Seat 7: Viet Tran - 2,335,000 (47 bb)
Seat 8: Marlon Nonales - 710,000 (14 bb)
Seat 9: Stuart Tuvey - 2,280,000 (46 bb)

WSOP.com will return with updates from throughout the final table so make sure to stay tuned to see the exciting conclusion of the event. You can see updates up to this point by clicking here

 

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