After almost 14 hours, we have whittled our field of 118 Day 3 starters (of 2,040 total entries) down to just nine. It’s not officially The Final Table until we get down to eight, but when they come back tomorrow at 1pm they’ll be on a single table and if it’s good enough for TD Nick O’Hara, it’s good enough for us.
Behoodied tournament behemoth Steve O’Dwyer remains the chip leader on 14.435 million, but his stack no longer dwarfs everyone else’s – Kyle Maguire is close behind him on 13.075 million after busting two players on the outer table and raising relentlessly throughout the last level of the day.
We’re also looking at possibly crowning a two-time Irish Open winner tomorrow – 2016 winner Dan Wilson and 2014 winner Patrick Clarke have both made it back to their shared happy place, and it’s not inconceivable that one of them could be taking home a second bit of Irish Open hardware, although they’ll be coming back as the two shortest stacks so they’ll have their work cut out for them.
Much of the UK poker community will be rooting for Gary Spinks – a frequent and enthusiastic regular at Nottingham’s Dusk Till Dawn poker club, he’s promised to give €100,000 to the dealers there if he wins – a beautiful gesture indeed towards the often unsung heroes of the poker world. Going into the day in the middle of the pack, chips-wise, Spinks is in with a very real chance.
FINAL TABLE SEATS & CHIPS
Seat 1 Steve O’Dwyer – 14,435,000
Seat 2 Garry Spinks – 8,275,000
Seat 3 Matthew Bushell – 5,545,000
Seat 4 Patrick Clarke – 2,005,000
Seat 5 Daniel Wilson – 1,940,000
Seat 6 Justin Boyle – 8,450,000
Seat 7 Mircea Rus – 3,730,000
Seat 8 Chris Williams – 2,765,000
Seat 9 Kyle Maguire – 13,075,000
We’ll be blogging the whole thing along with the live stream and we’ll be bringing you all the action from our plethora of side events as well – choose your favourite from the dropdown menu above to view. Now, to see who’s still in the bar…