Coates Leads, Few Champions Club Members Still Alive

The biggest World Poker Tour event ever held at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa ended Day 3 with just 34 survivors. While there are some big names near the top of the leaderboard, as well as many past champions heading to the event’s penultimate day, WPT first-timer Charles Coates paced the field with 3,371,000.

Coates might not have the tournament pedigree of players like Blake Bohn and Nathan Bjerno, who also bagged near 3,000,000, or WPT Champions Club members Tony Ruberto, Olivier Busquet, Anthony Gregg or Asher Conniff, but the North Carolina native could be setting himself as the next amateur to win a major live tournament. Sharuane Vijayaram was the first of the year, after he won the Aussie Millions Main Event for just over $1,600,000 last month.

“I just made some pretty good reads and didn’t let people push me around,” said Coates when Day 3 ended, adding, “I just got lucky, you know? Hands stood up, that’s pretty much it.”

The remaining 34 will return to resume play at the Borgata later this afternoon and they’ll need to do what Coates did yesterday, make some good reads, get a lucky and have their hands stand up, if they want to advance to tomorrow’s final table.

Day 4 will see the field play down to a final six and updates from the Borgata can be found on WorldPokerTour.com.

A list of the top ten stacks is provided below:

1. Charles Coates – 3,371,000
2. Blake Bohn – 3,024,000
3. Nathan Bjerno – 2,892,000
4. Jia Liu – 2,561,000
5. Adnan Mohammad – 2,325,000
6. Richard Foster – 2,100,000
7. Casey Yontz – 1,776,000
8. Tony Ruberto – 1,528,000
9. Bart Dowling – 1,400,000
10. Jiqiang Tong – 1,365,000