Eric Blair Leads NAPT Venetian Main Event Entering Day 4

What started as a mammoth field of 872 players in the PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) Venetian Main Event has now shrunk to just 24. Eric Blair leads the pack with a mountain of 3.7 million chips and two days of play remaining.

Blair leads fellow poker pro Sam Stein, who finished second in a $5,000 No Limit Hold’em tournament during the 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for $168,000, falling to Swiss star Stefan Huber heads-up. Stein has 3.4 million chips after three days of play at the Venetian in Las Vegas and all players are in hot pursuit of the $827,000 top prize. The tournament will play down to its final table today in Sin City and the survivors will return to determine a winner on Wednesday.

Team PokerStars Pro member Vanessa Rousso, a GoDaddy Girl, was the final casualty of Day 3. Rousso open-shoved with K-6 and received a call from Tom Marchese, who was seated in the big blind and showed pocket sevens. The board fell 10-3-J-A-J and Rousso headed to the exit. She’ll be one of 64 players to hit the felts of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, which will play out at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas beginning on March 5th. The tournament will air on NBC, which is currently carrying the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Steve “MrTimCaum” O’Dwyer hit the rails in 28th place in the NAPT Venetian Main Event. O’Dwyer finished sixth in December’s World Poker Tour (WPT) Doyle Brunson Five Diamond World Poker Classic for $202,000 and committed his chips on Monday with a wired pair of jacks. However, Blair picked up pocket aces and sent O’Dwyer packing. O’Dwyer just edged out UB.com pro Michael Binger, who dropped in 29th place.

The money bubble burst in the $5,000 buy-in event on Monday when Daniel Schreiber was eliminated in 129th place. Schreiber shoved with queen-high, but ran into Kyle Zartman’s pocket rockets. Shortly thereafter, pros began dropping like flies from the inaugural NAPT event on U.S. soil, with Jon “PearlJammer” Turner and Greg Raymer soon sent out. Raymer ran pocket sevens into pocket nines and, just like that, the 2004 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champ was knocked out in 102nd place.

Who is left in the NAPT Venetian Main Event, you ask? Here are the 24 players remaining and their chip counts:

1. Eric Blair – 3,700,000
2. Sam Stein – 3,409,000
3. Steve “MrSmokey1” Billirakis – 2,372,000
4. David Miscikowski – 1,839,000
5. Tom Marchese – 1,795,000
6. Thomas Fuller – 1,540,000
7. Kyle Zartman – 1,483,000
8. Yunus Jamal – 1,074,000
9. Daniel Cossette – 1,033,000
10. Daniele Nestola – 872,000
11. Daniel Clemente – 805,000
12. Joseph Cutler – 742,000
13. David Paredes – 706,000
14. Jason “TheMasterJ33” Dewitt – 622,000
15. Blair Hinkle – 614,000
16. Jonathan “FatalError” Aguiar – 567,000
17. Andrew Chen – 539,000
18. Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger – 539,000
19. “Miami” John Cernuto – 473,000
20. Mark Ketteringham – 470,000
21. Michael De Gilio – 385,000
22. Steve Stolzmann – 365,000
23. John Franciosi – 286,000
24. Christina Lindley – 103,000

Each one of the 24 Day 4 starters is assured at least $20,000, with members of the eight-handed final table collecting $60,000 or more. Besides the tail end of the NAPT Venetian Main Event, Tuesday marks the start of the $25,000 High-Roller Bounty Shootout. The tournament, as expected, features 48 of the game’s greats, including Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko, 2008 WSOP Main Event winner Peter Eastgate, reigning champ Joe Cada, Victory Poker front man Andrew “good2cu” Robl, UB.com’s Annie Duke, and DoylesRoom pro Hoyt Corkins. One qualifier will join the stacked field of 48 sharks.

Both the High-Roller Bounty Shootout and Venetian Main Event will air as part of ESPN2’s coverage of the NAPT, which begins in April. Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for the latest NAPT results.

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Poker argot:

GOOD GAME - A game with players worse than you so that you can expect to win a lot of money.
FACE CARD - A jack, queen or king (a card with a face on it, not joker).
LIVE [CARD] - In Stud, a card probably not held by other players.
QUARTER - [1] Twenty-five dollars, often symbolized by a green casino chip. [2] To divide half a pot between two tying hands. In split pot games, a player who "ties" another player for their half of the pot is said to be "quartered". One might say "I didn't bet my A-2 because I figured I'd get quartered".
RING GAME - A standard game where players can come and go as they choose. The opposite of TOURNAMENT.
SET - In Hold'em, three of a kind where two of the cards are hole cards.

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