Main event field now at 18

It took more than three-and-a-half hours to eliminate nine players Wednesday and cut the World Series of Poker’s main event field to 18.

Seats were redrawn and the players were seated at two tables as the action progressed toward a final table of nine in the $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em main event at the Rio.

The top three chip leaders that began the day on Wednesday were still in place by 4 p.m.

Billy Kopp of Erlanger, Ky., had 26.2 million in chips, Darvin Moon of Oakland, Md., was in second with 17.5 million in chips while Steven Begleiter of Chappaqua, N.Y., held onto the third place with 16.8 million.

The biggest in the competition was by Phil Ivey of Las Vegas, a seven-time World Series of Poker individual event champion who was the best-known player left in the action.

Ivey began play Wednesday in fourth place with 11.3 million in chips. His stack had declined by almost 6 million chips in the early afternoon and he was in 15th place.