Darrell Dicken Stays Atop Leaderboard at Mirage Poker Showdown

It was a short day at the Mirage Poker Showdown Monday, as only 13 players needed to be eliminated before the cash bubble was popped.  The original plan was to play down to the money, but because it happened so quickly (2 hours), the players agreed to go ahead and continue for another couple hours.  When play ended on Day 3, only 18 players remained to vie for the $1,066,295 first prize. 

Darrell Dicken, who came in as the chip leader, retained his position at the top, more than doubling his chip stack over the course of the afternoon.  And, just he did the previous day, he closed the day with an enormous chip lead, almost half a million more than second place Cory Carroll.  Dicken seemed to have an easy time with it, too, as he never really got himself into much trouble.  In fact, he may have played a little too conservatively at times, such as when he only checked-called in a hand with Phil Ivey and Alan Goehring when he flopped top pair and turned trips.  In his defense, he himself said that he did not want to take unnecessary risks against Ivey, who had a big stack. 

The field will play down to the final television table of six on Tuesday, starting a noon PDT.  As only 12 people need to be shown the door, it should be a relatively short day.  

Day 3 Chip Counts 

1. Darrell Dicken -- 1,167,000
2. Cory Carroll -- 697,000
3. Richard Kirsch -- 610,000
4. David Peat -- 550,000
5. Amnon Filippi -- 532,000
6. Phil Ivey -- 475,000
7. Mikko Pispala -- 322,000
8. Jonathan Little -- 300,000
9. Randy Holland -- 250,000
10. Tom Pniak -- 218,000
11. Shannon Shorr -- 197,000
12. John D'Agostino -- 186,000
13. Jon Friedberg -- 145,000
14. Nam Le -- 136,000
15. Davidson Matthew -- 111,000
16. Cuong Nguyen -- 108,000
17. David Pham -- 107,000
18. Alan Goehring -- 60,000