10 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT DAY 5 OF THE MAIN EVENT AS WE TAKE A DINNER BREAK
We began with almost 300, now just 150 or so remain in this year's Main Event.  Day 5 of action has seen more notables hit the rail, more players make their names known via the chip counts. We even saw a player who busted on Day 2 make headlines, which we will explain in this edition of 10 Things You Should Know About the Main Event:

1. Martin Jacobson is trying to follow in the footsteps of Joe Cada as the only player to finish as one of the Day 1 chip leaders and then go on to win the Main Event. The Swede continues to be moving along just fine here on Day 5 and, unlike Cada, has not seen his stack dip much below average at all this tournament. He is currently sitting on a top twenty stack headed into the dinner break.

2. Eight of the top ten chip counts belong to Americans, but the two at the top are actually of the Brazilian and Canadian variety. Bruno Politano leads the field at dinner break after a massive hand where he doubled through Zach Jiganti in a set over set situation. Not too far behind him is Canadian Griffin Benger, who started the day third in chips and has only trended upward from there.

3. Jason Johnson came out to the WSOP this summer for one reason: Ryan Riess. Last year’s champ used to deal to Johnson back in his Michigan poker games, so, according to Riess, Johnson thought, “if the dealer can win the Main, I certainly can.” Now, Johnson hasn’t exactly done that just yet, but he has had an incredible summer and, should he make the November Nine, it would be his third final table of 2014. Johnson took seventh place in this year’s Millionaire Maker tournament, then followed that up with a third place showing in a $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event.

4. We’ve got four ladies left in this field, including Mikiyo Aoki, who wowed livestream fans with her play in the Ladies Event earlier this summer. Aoki has the biggest stack of the quartet with over 2.5 million, but Marcia Kuntz remains in seven-figure territory. Maria Ho is sitting on just under a million chips, while Darlene Lee is the short stack with around 350,000.

5. David Einhorn’s run in the Main Event may be over, but the effects of his play will be far-reaching thanks to his five-figure donation to Robin Hood NYC, a non-profit organization that raises money to fight poverty in New York City. The charity will receive the entirety of Einhorn’s cash, which amounted to $44,728.

6. The plan for today is to play not quite six full levels of action. In reality, we are just playing one extra hour of the sixth level of the day in order to make up for some of the lost time on the money bubble and after the early stop on Day 3.  So, the field will play an extra hour today and tomorrow to keep things on pace for a relatively early finish come Monday when the November Nine is set.

7. Brandon Shack-Harris has at least a couple of months to sit back, relax, and enjoy his seven-point lead in the WSOP Player of the Year race. There were still a couple of players in the field at the start of today who could make a difference in this race, but with the recent exits of Kevin Eyster (204th) and John Kabbaj (179th), no one will be able to catch the bracelet winner until WSOP Asia-Pacific gets underway in October.

8. We are down to eight bracelet winners in this Main Event field with just over 150 players remaining. One of them, Brian Hastings, has been near the top of the counts all afternoon. Another, Leif Force, was briefly the chip leader. While these two are cruising along with big stacks, Matt Waxman and Luis Velador are closer to the middle of the pack, while Simon Charette, Jon Aguiar, Vitaly Lunkin, and Vladimir Shchemelev are all in the bottom half of the counts.

9. Mark Newhouse is still in the hunt to improve upon his ninth place finish in this event last year. Out of all the players left in the field, Newhouse has gotten the furthest along in this tournament out of everyone. While we have an 11th place finisher in Leif Force and a 12th place finisher, Bryan Devonshire (both of whom we spoke to earlier), Newhouse is the only one who knows what it feels like to be under the final table lights. It must be good motivation for him, as he rallied up the counts earlier this afternoon and is currently sitting on around 3 million chips heading into dinner.

10.Take a look at the top ten counts on our chip count page.