News

Today’s action began with 29-year-old Mats Gavatin as the chip leader with 405,000 chips. Gavatin’s lead was short lived and after the first couple of hands Nick Binger, younger brother of Michael Binger took over the chip lead. Over the next three hours of play Binger would go on to single-handedly eliminate the first six players at the final table including Gavatin. Through his incredible efforts in steamrolling the table, Binger found himself holding 1.4 million of the 2.2 million chips on play.

Once the table was down to three the play changed drastically and this tournament that once looked like it was all but Binger’s to win became the tournament that no one wanted to win. Joining Binger in three-handed action were 22-year-old Jonathan “Tex” Tamyo and Gary. With none of the three players remaining ever experiencing final table glory, each player had difficulty mustering up a knockout punch when they found themselves with the chip lead. Binger had an enormous lead of over 1 million chips. Little by little however, Tamayo won small hand after small hand and cut the lead to only 250,000 after only one hour. The next hour of play saw Binger’s lead evaporate completely   with Tamayo taking the lead and Gary waking up to take second spot away from Binger, which is where they stood as play headed into the dinner break.

After dinner, the lead would swap hands on several occasions which each of the three players getting a taste of the lead on multiple occasions, while at the same time each player also found themselves holding down the cellar on the same number of occasions. Tamayo was finally able to give Binger a decisive blow on this following hand from the official WSOP updates:

"Limit Hold'em: Frank Gary has the button and folds. Nick Binger raises from the small blind and Jonathan Tamayo re-raises out of the big blind. Binger re-raises, making it four bets. Tamayo caps the action and Binger calls. The flop is 2h-10d-7h and Binger and Tamayo get all in for Binger's last 69,000. Binger: 3s-3d Tamayo: Qs-Qc. The turn is the 10C and Binger will need a three on the river to stay alive. As the railbirds cheer for a three to pop off, the river is the Js and Binger is eliminated in third place."