Champion bridge player Jan Jansma is leading the final six in the WPT Amsterdam Main Event. Up top is a €152,600 first prize along with a €15,000 WPT Tournament of Champions package.
The next WPT event is WPTDeepstacks on the French Riviera starting May 30 when WPTDeepStacks teams up with PMU.fr for WPTDeepStacks Cannes at Le Croisette Casino Barriere.
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Jansma, who lives in Spijkenisse, is a champion bridge player and editor of the Dutch IMP bridge magazine. He has been playing bridge since childhood and his wife Aida also plays.
There were 32 players at the start of Day 3 at Holland Casino, but only 28 players would make the money. The unfortunate bubble boy was Marcel Schouten, who got it in good holding top pair, but overnight chip leader Shyngis Satubayev rivered a straight, meaning that the remaining players in the field were guaranteed €4,425 ($4,823).
As the day drew on, the chip lead rotated through a number of different players. Satubayev, British pro Louis Salter, EPT13 Barcelona champion Sebastian Malec, Jansma and Daniel Danivar all held it at different points in the day, with no player making a real surge.
Malec, who took down EPT Barcelona for €1.1m in 2016, threatened a brief period of dominance, eliminating Brandon Mifsud, Fatih Aydin and Claire Renaut in quick succession to become the first player over a million in chips, but he was soon pegged back.
PokerStars Championship and WPT MonteDam Swing winner Andreas Klatt bust in tenth place to confirm the unofficial final table. The 30-year-old from Stuttgart won €13,435 along with a PokerStars Championship Barcelona Main Event package worth €7,500. The PokerStars Championship Barcelona Main Event takes place August 21-27.
With the elimination of Finland’s Jari Mahonen, Abbas Moradi and Malec, we were down to a final six who will return today to play down to a winner. Shyngis Satubayev was chip leader at the start of Day 3 but goes into the final as the short stack. He is a WPT Travel “frequent flyer” and has been doing well of late – he finished seventh in the WPT Amsterdam High Roller for €17,915 and also cashed in a €5k NL Turbo at PokerStars Monte Carlo on May 5 for €14,100. His best finish to date was winning the €1,300 NL Cash Ville Cup in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, in 2014.
Louis Salter has close to $1m in live tournament winnings including victory in the Eureka Prague High Roller in 2014 for €124k. Jorn Walthaus is one of Holland’s best known players with over $725k in live tournament winnings. He was 26th in the 2013 WSOP Main Event for $285k.
There will be cards-up coverage on a 30-minute delay hosted by WPT anchor Lynn Gilmartin starting at 2.30 p.m.
The final six players are:
Seat 1. Louis Salter – 735,000
Seat 2. Jan Jansma – 2,365,000
Seat 3. Shyngis Satubayev – 430,000
Seat 4. Jonathan Rozema – 495,000
Seat 5. Jorn Walthaus – 845,000
Seat 6. Daniel Danivar – 1,800,000