Day 3 of the tournament was a blisteringly fast affair with nearly 50 players going to the rail in just three levels.
Through it all Ivey remained consistent and ended up finishing sixth in chips with 1.1 million.
Amazingly Ivey has never cashed in the Aussie Millions but that will change this year as the money bubble burst early and with only 26 players left at the end of the day every player left is guaranteed $35,000 (AUD).
Joining Ivey in the final 26 is former Aussie Millions champ Lee Nelson who took down the tournament in 2006.
Nelson finished the day with 878,000 and a shot at becoming the first repeat winner in the history of event.
Also in the top 26 are pros David Steicke, Daniel Idema, Yann Dion and Grant Levy.
Not all the pros were that lucky, however, as Swede Michael Tureniec and consistent Australian casher Billy “The Croc” Argyros both busted in the money.
Koon Crushed on Last Hand of the Day
West Virginia product Jason Koon’s last hand of the day went about as bad it possibly could have as he flipped for his tournament life with a massive, tournament-leading, pot on the line and ended up losing.
“Unreal how heartbreaking tourney poker can be,” wrote Koon on Twitter. “Paint a Picasso over 3 days and just lose a massive flip for all the money.”
English pro Matt Turk was the player who won the pot and he finished with 2.6 million in chips, which makes him the overwhelming chip leader.
Still, he’ll have to get past a red-hot Ivey who was stacking chips all day long and even made an opponent, who had already committed half his stack, fold pocket kings pre-flop.
Tournament organizers announced a surprising decision to change the schedule at the end of the day. They have moved the final table back to Sunday despite the fact that there are only 26 players left.
Apparently the decision was made because organizers are moving the $250k Challenge from tomorrow to Saturday so that more players can play and there’s only one TV feature table.
Regardless play will resume in the Main Event at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow and it could be another short day.
Here’s a look at the top 10 chip leaders heading into Day 4:
Matt Turk – 2,675,000 Tim O’Shea – 1,376,000 Patrick Healy – 1,353,000 Bjorn Li – 1,222,000 Yann Dion – 1,156,000 Phil Ivey – 1,107,000 Daniel Idema – 1,033,000 Minh Nguyen – 992,000 Borge Dypvik – 882,000 Lee Nelson – 878,000
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