Playing down from 62 players to just six, action went for about 15 hours at the Kings Casino but the young German Kretz seemed none the worse for wear.
Busting Agris Klaise, Denis Pisarev, Tobias Reinkemeier, Thomas Frandsen and Jan Bendik over the day, Kretz also took huge pots off of Chris McClung and Day 2 chip leader Martins Adeniya to take a commanding stack of 6.3 million chips into the final table and put himself in the driver’s seat for his first major cash.
His only previous live tournament cash was for just $1,476 at a tournament in Austria last year.
Kretz will still have his work cut out for him as he leads a final six of very experienced players including Russian Andrey Pateychuk, fresh off two huge scores this summer.
Pateychuk made a very deep run at the 2011 WSOP Main Event before busting in 15th for $478,174. He followed that up with a win at EPT San Remo in October for €680,000.
Pateychuk enters the final table third in chips with 2.3 million.
Frenchman Benjamin Pollak is looking to build on his $500k in career live tournament earnings and comes into the final table second in chips with 4.86 million.
Norway’s Sigurd Eskelund, a 2010 WSOP bracelet winner, will come in fourth in chips with 1.575 million. Spain’s Adria Balaguer is fifth with 1.315 million.
Canadian Russell Carson, an online poker icon in his own right with almost $6 million in earnings, is the short stack on just 750k
The seating assignments and chip counts for the final table, courtesy of wpt.com:
Seat 1: Adria Balaguer 1,315,000 Seat 2: Andrey Pateychuk 2,310,000 Seat 3: Benjamin Pollak 4,865,000 Seat 4: Russell Carson 725,000 Seat 5: Stanislav Kretz 6,300,000 Seat 6: Sigurd Eskelund 1,575,000The day started with Brit Adeniya, a former London trader, leading the way by a wide margin. Not much went Adeniya's way today however and he busted in 19th place for $16,520.
Eugene Katchalov, Tristan Clemencon, Day 1b chip leader Casey Kastle, Basil “French durrrr” Yaiche, McClung and Jamie Rosen all also made the money but hit the rail today.
Former WPT champion Mike “SirWatts” Watson busted out just short of the final table in ninth. German Tobias Renkemeier ended up in 11th.
Because of the long day today the final table won’t start until 3 pm. tomorrow (CET). First place pays out €450,000.
Follow the action live on the WPT Live Updates pages and catch the live stream on a 30-minute delay here.
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