Final table chip counts:
1. Nick Schulman 2,990,000
2. Daniel Negreanu 2,166,000
3. Eugene Katchalov 1,476,000
4. Bryn Kenney 1,390,000
5. Humberto Brenes 757,000
6. Sandor Demjan 379,000
7. Andrew Lichtenberger 373,000
Nick Schulman, from New York, has a sizable lead going into the final table with Sandor Demjan and Andrew Lichtenberger the shorts stacks. Only five players will make the money from the remaining seven players. First place will make $1.5 million and second $1 million from the $3,743,000 prize pool.
Daniel Negreanu had just picked off Dan "Jungleman12" Cates in a hand to drop Cates' stack to around 200,000 when the double elimination final hand of the day occurred. Both James Obst and Cates, playing on separate tables, pushed all in short from under the gun and both were called and lost their hands to be eliminated and miss out on the TV final table. For some reason the tournament wasn't playing hand for hand and all the players were surprised while bagging up chips that the final table would begin 7, not 8 handed.
Final table play will be time delayed but live play captured on ESPN2 and ESPN3.com.
Day 1 A of the PCA main event begins Saturday and is expected to generate a massive prize pool of over $20 million. Last year's winner, 21 year old Harrison Gimbel walked away with $2.2 million.
There are 48 total events, many of which are between $1k-$5k buy-in events, including the World Cup of Poker, The Ladies Tournament, a $5k NAPT Bounty Shoutout, $5k PLO tournament, and the regular $25k High Roller event.
