While he was neck and neck for the lead at the end of play yesterday, he finished today with an almost 180,000-chip advantage over his closest competitor and the outright lead heading to Day 4.
Day 3 play at Foxwoods ended with exactly 27 players left, just busting the money bubble on the final elimination of the day and assuring the remaining players at least $19,916.
With 658,00 chips Frankenberger is poised for a much bigger cash, however, and has some distance from second-place Jack Schanbacher, who finished Day 3 with 483,500 in chips.
Online icon Christian “charder30” Harder, who started the day in sixth place, moved up to third in the counts by the end of the day with 378,500.
Larry Greenberg (360,000) and WPT title holder Jonathan Little (355,000) round out the top five heading into Day 4 action tomorrow.
Also still alive heading into Day 4 are noted pros Chris Klodnicki (236k), WPT title holder Hoyt Corkins (235k), Matt Glantz (226k) and Matt Stout (221k), who virtually ended play for the day when he crippled Alistair Melville in a big hand on the money bubble.
Melville was knocked down to just two big blinds and was eliminated a hand later.
Also still with a chance heading to Day 4 but with a less-than-average stack are ESPN contributor Bernard Lee (84k), WPT title holder Lee Markholt (61k), Day 2 chip leader Dan Colpoys (51k) and Allen Kessler (43k).
Busting out just short of the money today were Kathy Liebert, Darren Elias, Jason Mercier, 2010 WPT World Poker Finals champ Jeff Forrest, Matt Brady, David “Doc” Sands, Erik Seidel and Dwyte Pilgrim.
The remaining 27 players will return to Foxwoods to play down to the final table of six starting at noon tomorrow.
Follow along with live updates from the WPT Reporting team here.
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