Canadian leads as tournament enters crucial week; defending champ Cada still in

Now comes crunch time at the World Series of Poker.

The field of 7,319 players in the $10,000 buy-in, no-limit hold 'em world championship event has been whittled to 2,557. Those players will start play at noon today , the official third day of the tournament at the Rio. Sunday was an off day.

By Friday, the field will be cut to 27 players who will return Saturday and play for one of nine spots on the final table to play in November. The winner takes home more than $8.9 million.

Going into play today , Canadian David Assouline of Hampstead, Quebec, is the chip leader with 387,800 in tournament chips. Only a handful of players still in competition have more than 300,000 in tournament chips.

Joe Cada of Michigan, the 2009 champion, remains in the hunt for a second consecutive crown. Cada has a slightly above-average stack of chips going into today . He and Eric Buchman of New York, the 2009 fourth-place finisher, are the only two players from last year's final table still playing.

Last year, Cada was an unknown. This year, his 2009 championship bracelet and $8.5 million prize make him a target.

"I don't think it really matters," Cada said of his notoriety. "There are different variables, and what matters is how you adjust to your table and how your table is playing. So, there is no difference."

The World Series of Poker has been dominated in the past few years by relative unknowns, but former champions and top professionals will play today.

The most notable is 10-time individual event bracelet winner Johnny Chan of Los Angeles, who won the Main Event in 1987 and 1988. Chan, who was ranked second in tournament chips after his qualifying session, is among the chip leaders going into today with 281,000.

Former World Series of Poker players of the year Daniel Negreanu and Allen Cunningham, both of Las Vegas, will be in the field today .

Also still playing is 2003 Main Event champion Chris Moneymaker, the amateur player and Tennessee accountant whose victory is credited with sparking poker's revival . He was hesitant to say he was on the comeback trail.

"Hey wait a minute, where did I go?" said Moneymaker, who has not cashed at the World Series of Poker since 2007.

The poker player, who won $2.5 million in 2003, said he has reassessed his game.

"I fell behind to be quite honest," Moneymaker said. "If you want to call it a comeback, then you have to go back to when I started to think differently about this and take the game more seriously and start to learn again."

The 57-event World Series of Poker has smashed several all-time highs in its six-week run. A record 72,966 players participated in the events . The participants created a prize pool of more than $187.1 million, the largest in the tournament's history .

The Main Event pool topped almost $68.8 million, and payouts will go to the top 747 players.

Contact reporter Howard Stutz at
hstutz@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3871.