Update: WSOP Day 3
At the beginning of the Day 3 of the 2012 World Series of Poker main event, a special award was given for the Dealer of the Year, and the honor belonged to Timothy Louis (39), a dealer from New Orleans who was involved in the Big One for One Drop epic.
The action on the day involved 1,698 players at the beginning, but the number soon dropped significantly, losing around 100 names an hour, as the players were battling to remain past the magic cash bubble of 666 players, which guarantees a pay check of at least $19,227.
The chip leader at the beginning, French pro Gaelle Baumann, started with 505,800, she showed a lot of skill, but later on dropped down to around 36th in chip counts.
As per the big names who busted out early during the action, there were Robert Varkonyi, Jerry Yang, Peter Eastgate, and Pius Heinz, leaving just 860 players by the time Ben Alcober became the first to reach the one million chip mark.
Thereby, the top ten chip counts at the time were:
Benjamin Alcober (1.0 million in chips)
Ben Greenberg (885,000)
A.J. Jejelowo (880,000)
Sean Rice (835,000)
Erik Hellman (807,500)
Cylus Watson (760,000)
Paul Volpe (720,000)
Marc Wright (700,000)
Dane Lomas (683,000)
Daniel Rudd (630,000)
Much below these ten are some other notable players, such as Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier, Shaun Deeb, Sorel Mizzi, Freddy Deeb, Andrew Lichtenberger, Marvin Rettenmaier, Antonio Esfandiari, Johnny Chan, John Juanda, and Hollywood actor Kevin Pollak.