WPT Championship Day 5 – Final Table Ready to Go

It took a long time – eleven hours – but the WPT Championship finally got down to the final six players from the twenty-seven that started the fifth day.  Of the six survivors, the one who started the day on top, Paul Lee, finished there, as well.  With 11.8 million chips, he has a staggering 5.3 million chip lead on the second place competitor, 2001 World Series of Poker champion, Juan Carlos Mortensen. 

At not even two eliminations per hour (and there was no dinner break), it was a surprisingly slow pace for a WPT event.  It didn’t start out slowly, however, as five players were knocked out in the first hour, including a final table member from last year, Roland de Wolfe, and last year’s WSOP runner-up, Paul Wasicka. 

Other notables eliminated on the next-to-last day were Phil Hellmuth (18^th), Jim “KrazyKanuck” Worth (16^th), David Levi (13^th), Can Kim Hua (12^th), and Scott Fischman (8^th).   

Final table play will begin at 5:00pm Friday at the Bellagio.  Nobody playing Friday will go home with less than $300,000. 

Day 5 Chip Counts

1.  Paul Lee -- 11,828,000
2. Juan Carlos Mortensen -- 6,501,000
3. Guy Laliberte -- 4,690,000
4. Kirk Morrison -- 4,194,000
5. Mike Wattel -- 2,887,000
6. Tim Phan -- 2,162,000

Originally published 2:08 PM Friday, April 27, 2007