James Salmon Leads PSCP Main Event, Tito Ortiz Survives

Day 3 of the inaugural PokerStars Championship Panama Main Event returned 78 hopefuls for the 71 spots that made the money. A relatively short day on the felt saw Day 2 chip leader Igor Yaroshveskyy actually lose chips but remained in the top ten stacks with James Salmon as the only player to cross the seven-figure mark to top the remaining 30 players.

Yaroshevskyy and Salmon got involved in a tournament-changing pot near the end of the day, where they flipped stack sizes. On a board of Kh 4d 3h 2c Td Yaroshevskyy moved all in after two streets of large bets. Salmon tank-called with king queen to win the pot and Yaroshevskyy tabled eight seven for a bluff.

UFC Hall of Famer returned to play with a top five stack but took a tough beat and lost most of his stack. He still returns for Day 3 but with 14 big blinds to mount a comeback.

All returning players have $12,480 locked up with two more pay jumps before the final table. Davidi Kitai managed to cash in 36th place despite having one of the shortest returning stacks.

Ari Engel, Daniel Dvoress, Martin Finger and Steve O’Dwyer all made deep runs with cashes in the event, but won’t be returning for Day 3. Cards will be in the air local time and they’ll most likely play four or five levels with the final table scheduled for Monday.

Top Ten Chip Counts

1. James Salmon – 1,020,000
2. Robin Luca Wozniczek – 658,000
3. JC Alvarado – 642,000
4. Vincent Allevato – 596,000
5. Vasyl Vertianov – 586,000
6. Byron Kaverman – 569,000
7. Michael Lech – 537,000
8. Denis Timofeev – 520,000
9. Jonathan Abdellatif – 513,000
10. Igor Yaroshevskyy – 506,000