Piccioli, who seemed a lock to make the final table as he accumulated a massive chip stack yesterday, got extremely short-stacked with eight players left and had to make a move.
The New Yorker flopped top-pair with ten-six and that was enough to ship his last 900,000 in the pot. Unfortunately for Piccioli, Amir Babakhani snapped him off with king-ten and the board finished with a meaningless ace on the turn and eight on the river.
Piccioli picked up $52,609 for coming in eighth place but will have to wait another day to win his first WPT title.
It was even more painful for Harder as he hard bubbled the final table coming in seventh place.
Harder ended up smashing pocket nines into Babakhani’s pocket queens. He picked up $66,132 for coming in seventh.
Babakhani’s work busting Harder and Piccioli catapulted him to the chip lead with 6.6 million for tomorrow’s festivities.
Here’s a look at the rest of the final-table chip counts:
1. Amir Babakhani – 6,635,000 2. Barry Kruger – 4,770,000 3. Jason Duval – 4,770,000 4. Tao Liang – 3,870,000 5. Jonathan Bardier – 1,470,000 6. Martin Leblanc – 1,140,000Plenty of Canadian Content in Final Six
The 2013 WPT Spring Championship Final Table is not exactly star-studded but it does feature a great deal of Canadian as all six remaining players hail from the country.
Jonathan Bardier has a considerable reputation online as Poker Own U with over $2 million in winnings according to PocketFives.com.
Jason Duval is perhaps the most established live player of the bunch with a final table appearance at EPT Madrid in 2012.
Barry Kruger, Tao Liang, Martin Leblanc and a surging Amir Babakhani round out the final table.
The final table begins at 3 p.m. ET tomorrow with $442,248 still on the line for first place. Check the WPT live updates here.
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