Coming into the day in the bottom half of the remaining 20 players, Rettenmaier needed two critical double-ups to keep him alive.
The first, early in level 20, came against Dutchman Paul Berende. Rettenmaier had his AQ shove snapped off by Berende with kings but an ace on the flop added another 350k to his stack to get him back in contention.
The last, in level 25, came against chip leader Vladimir Bozinovic. Hovering just under 1 million chips, Rettenmaier got it in bad with K9o against the Serbian's AQ but a king on the river saved him and pushed him up to 1.56 million to end the night -- second overall.
The hit to Bozinovic knocked him back to 1.98m but still hold his chip lead entering the final table.
With back-to-back WPT titles last year, another would give Rettenmaier 3 titles in just 9 months.
Dutch pro Paul "padjes" Berende, a multi-million-dollar winner online, bagged up 1.3 million to sit third overall.
Oswin Ziegelbecker (1.15 million), Kimmo Kurko (1.1 million) and Gzregorz Wyraz (550,000) round out the final six.
Staszko, Sbrzesny Hit the Wall
Pros Martin Staszko and Bodo Sbrzesny, both strong contenders for the final table for virtually all of the tournament, finally hit their walls today.
Staszko hit a run of bad luck early, doubling up a couple of players before finally falling in 17th with tens against aces. Sbrzesny made it a bit further but still bowed out in 11th place.
Official Final Table Chip Counts:
1. Vladimir Bozinovic – 1,985,000 2. Marvin Rettenmaier – 1,565,000 3. Paul Berende – 1,305,000 4. Oswin Ziegelbecker – 1,150,000 5. Kimmo Kurko – 1,090,000 6. Grzegorz Wyraz – 550,000Final-table action resumes at 2 pm local time. Watch the live stream or follow the live updates at WPT.com.
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