"20 bigs and a dream. Day 4 of the WSOP main event today." (Image: X/@realadamrude)

The first week of the 2024 World Series of Poker $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Championship Event – aka the WSOP Main Event – is usually a time when players have fun. There’s camaraderie among them, perhaps because they all have paid the buy-in to be there, at the Horseshoe or Paris Las Vegas to take part in poker’s premiere event. But as the field whittles down, the intensity ramps up, and joviality begins to flutter away. The time to determine who earns what slice of the $94.1 million pie is nigh. 

Who Will Be One of the Survivors?

The 10,112 players who bought in created a new record for the most players in the WSOP Main Event in its history, but only 3,617 of those fortunate souls were still around by the time Day 3 of the marathon started on Monday. For the first time, the entirety of the field was under the same roof – or roofs, as the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas were still necessary to accommodate the massive field. However, there was still a great deal of work for these players, even though they had slogged through a long week at the tables already.

There was an outside chance that the field would reach the magic number of 1,517 remaining players, those who would get paid from this tournament, by the end of play for the evening. It was not as though there was a lack of effort but, when the final bell clanged for the night, those who remained would have one more night to think about taking home some cash from their WSOP journey. Once the dust settled, 1,524 players were still left, seven short of the money, which should create a rather tense start to Day 4 on Tuesday. 

Time to Start Looking at the Leaderboard

Surprisingly, 73 players ended Day 3 action over the million-chip mark. These players would seem to be safely in the running to earn a cash for the 2024 WSOP Main Event, but poker can be a fickle game and chips won can become chips lost rather quickly. Some of the notable pros over the million-chip mark are Andrew Barfield (1.003 million), Adam Friedman (1.171 million), Day 2ABC chip leader Anthony Marsico (1.221 million), Jose Ignacio “Nacho” Barbero (1.289 million), and J.C. Alvarado (1.36 million). 

The Top Twenty has even more dangerous pros in contention. Will Failla is in sixteenth place with his 1.39 million stack, and two more pros, Ren Lin (1.57 million) and Charity Series of Poker founder Matt Stout (1.67 million) are in ninth and fifth places, respectively. Making the loudest noise of all the notable pros is last year’s third-place finisher in this very event, Alex Livingston.

Livingston started the day in third place and that is exactly where he would end Tuesday’s action, racking up 1.808 million in chips when the final cards were dealt. The last player to make back-to-back final tables at the WSOP Main Event was Mark Newhouse, who made those tables during the “November Nine” era of the tournament and finished ninth on both occasions. Former World Champion Dan Harrington also pulled off the feat, making the final table in both 2003 and 2004, finishing in third (2003) and fourth (2004) in those tournaments. 

Having the best of the Day 3 play was Spain’s Francisco Perez Moreno. He was able to capture the overall lead for the 2024 WSOP Main Event by becoming the only player over the two million mark in chips. Moreno seems to be locked in for a significant cash in this tournament, but there is still a lengthy trail to reach the final table. 

Top Ten chip counts after the field came together for Day 3

1. Francisco Perez Moreno (Spain), 2.19 million
2. Justin Datloff (USA), 1.82 million
3. Alex Livingston (Canada), 1.81 million
4. Marcelo Tadeu Aziz, Jr. (Brazil), 1.70 million
5. Matt Stout (USA), 1.67 million
6. Francis Anderson (USA), 1.66 million
7. Diogo Coelho (Portugal), 1.63 million
8. Nazar Buhalov (Ukraine), 1.63 million
9. Ren Lin (USA), 1.57 million
10. Clement Van Driessche (France), 1.56 million

The news was not as good for other top pros on the baize on Monday. Both Tom Dwan and Rami Boukai will have to fight off the felt if they are to take some cash from the 2024 WSOP Main Event (neither reported the exact number of their stack), while Anthony Ribero (48,000) and Johannes Becker (52,100) are hanging by their fingernails on the bottom of the leaderboard. They still have the dream of a World Championship, however; 2012 World Champion Greg Merson would find the rail in the early Day Three action, with Ali Eslami, Ben Lamb, Mike ‘The Mouth’ Matusow, and Nick Schulman joining him as the day continued. 

It is going to be a tense start when Day 4's 1,524 players come to the tables on Wednesday. Determining the seven players who will take nothing for their four days of work is the first order of business, then the divvying of the prize pool will begin. After the bubble pops, the players can potentially start looking forward in the schedule, to the weekend, when they may be a part of the final nine players for the 2024 World Series of Poker Main Event on Sunday.