Is Phan ready to become a WPT Legend(credit: John Phan's Official Web Site)
As Day 4 got underway at the 2008 WPT Legends of Poker Tour Main Event, the final 27 would be dwindled down to just 6. That’s right – just enough for the televised final table. 21 players would have to go. The remaining players wasted no time getting down to business and busting out.
Former WPT champ and former chip leader in this event Adam Weinraub, Allen Cunningham and the last lady remaining Maria Ho were all out early. Around this time, Amit Makhija put his foot on the accelerator and flipped his game into high gear. He piled on the chips and moved to the top of the heap.
As two tables remained, John “The Razor” Phan ended Lee Markholt’s day. Phan held pocket fives against the A,K of the winner of the 2008 WPT World Poker Challenge. Lee received an ace on the turn, but the river brought Phan a third five to cut the former champ’s tournament life short in 13th place.
Trong Nguyen took a big pot off Matt Keikoan and Layne Flack dodged some bullets. Each of these players made it to the final nine. However, Flack loses to the quads of John Phan. His eighth place finish is good for $105,620. Keikoan is the unfortunate final table bubble boy. The cash game specialist loses to online rounder Zach “CrazyZachary” Clark and receives more than $140k for his efforts.
Here are the seating arrangements and chip counts for the final six players:
Seat 1 – Trong Nguyen (980,000)
Seat 2 – Amit Makhija (3,225,000)
Seat 3 – Paul Smith (1,130,000)
Seat 4 – John Phan (2,415,000)
Seat 5 – Zachary Clark (2,025,000)
Seat 6 – Kyle Wilson (1,425,000)
Watch Layne Flack and Johnny Chan ‘rap’ together with Amanda Leatherman: