The field of the 2016 World Poker Tour (WPT) Caribbean Main Event was pared from 75 to just 10 on Tuesday as the remaining players are on the brink of the televised final table heading into Day 4. Keven Stammen is the chip leader with 1.764 million chips.
From the looks of the chip counts, it should be a very competitive final day. Behind Stammen is Day 2 chip leader Troy Quenneville with 1.360 million chips, Niall Farrell with 1.300 million, Colin Moffatt with 1.249 million, and Anthony Augustino with 1.033 million. Duff Carette has 822,000 and the rest of the field has in the 500,000 chip range or fewer.
Kevin Stammen is an extremely accomplished live poker tournament player, currently ranked 68th on the Global Poker Index. He has one WPT title to his name and it was a biggie: the 2014 WPT World Championship. This was also the largest cash of his career, worth $1.35 million. Stammen has two other WPT televised final tables to his credit, plus two near-misses. He has 36 World Series of Poker cashes, including one bracelet, in the 2009 $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em event. All told, Stammen has nearly $5 million in live tournament winnings.
The gap between Stammen’s chip stack and that of Quenneville was largely the result of the 14th place elimination. Stammen had raised to 45,000 pre-flop and Roberto Vahlis (whose name my brain keeps wanting to equate to a shortened version of “Valar Morghulis”) moved all-in for 310,000 chips. Stammen called with pocket Tens and Vahlis revealed pocket Threes. Nothing overly dramatic happened the rest of the way and Vahlis had to exit the tourney.
One interesting note about this tournament is how it truly demonstrates the intersection of live and online poker. This tour stop, like several others, is sponsored by partypoker. Naturally, partypoker hosted online satellites so players could qualify for WPT Caribbean. Nearly half – 17 – of the 36 in-the-money finishers qualified via partypoker and 7 of the final 10 players won entry via a partypoker satellite. That doesn’t mean all of them are amateurs, as some people might assume – Stammen, for instance, was one such qualifier – but it is still a nifty stat to see.
Today, the field of ten will play all the way until there is a champion. Aside from a break after the seventh place elimination to get the live stream cameras setup, the tournament will play straight through to a winner.
2016 World Poker Tour Caribbean Main Event – Day 3 Chip Leaders
1. Keven Stammen – 1,764,000
2. Troy Quenneville – 1,360,000
3. Niall Farrell – 1,300,000
4. Colin Moffatt – 1,249,000
5. Anthony Augustino – 1,033,000
6. Duff Charette – 822,000
7. Vishal Maini – 554,000
8. Stephen Woodhead – 550,000
9. Andrei Boghean – 455,000
10. Yiannis Liperis – 323,000
11. Jorge Arias – 244,000
