Selbst continued her bracelet-winning summer by building a stack of 814,000 while former $10k Heads-Up Championship winner Wolpert accumulated one million chips.
Of the 1,738 players who started the day just over 700 were still standing when the final level expired today.
Day 3 also saw the first player crack the one million-chip mark as Californian Benjamin Alcober hit 1.05 million midway through the day.
The sports stars playing in the 2012 Main Event were hit hard today as both cricketer Shane Warne and former NBA Heat member Earl Barron were eliminated.
NHL goalie Roberto Luongo stuck around, however, and will enter Day 4 with a short stack (92,000) but a legitimate chance at making the money.
This is what the top 10 leaderboard looked like after Day 3:
1. Dave D’Alesandro – 1,100,000 2. Sean Rice – 1,076,000 3. Jacob Balsiger – 1,065,000 4. Leo Wolpert – 1,003,500 5. Ben Greenberg – 963,000 6. A.J. Jejelowo – 928,500 7. Daniel Rudd – 834,500 8. Michael Ferrell – 821,000 9. Paul Volpe – 820,000 10. Vanessa Selbst – 814,000
Defending Champ Heinz Finally Dethroned
We’ll have a new world champion this year as Pius Heinz busted in the early stages of the day.
Heinz put in a valiant effort getting to Day 3 but finally busted when he turned two-pair against an opponent who flopped a set of sevens.
Fellow 2011 WSOP November Niner Ben Lamb had a wild day that saw him go from 255k to 0 chips in less than seven hours.
In his final hand Lamb shoved with pocket fives and Chris Moorman called him down with ace-seven. Moorman hit, Lamb didn’t and that was it for the 2011 WSOP Player of the Year.
The line out the Rio was long today as Dan Harrington, Phil Galfond, Barny Boatman, Faraz Jaka, Tristan Wade, Gabe Kaplan, Nam Le, James Dempsey, Jeff Shulman, Sammy Farha, Abe Mosseri, Barry Greenstein and John Racener all busted.
Meanwhile here’s a look at the notable players who punched their ticket to Day 4:
Sorel Mizzi (738,000) Vivek Rajkumar (678,000) John Phan (655,500) Jason Somerville (637,000) Gaelle Baumann (599,000) Shaun Deeb (598,000) Fabrizio Gonzalez (532,000) JP Kelly (506,000) Antonio Esfabdiari (485,000) Eric Baldiwn (368,000) Amit Makhija (326,000) Gavin Smith (323,500) Chris Moorman (305,500) Dag Martin Mikkelsen (230,500) Kevin Pollak (233,000) Erick Lindgren (222,000) Liv Boeree (207,500) Shawn Buchanan (205,500) Christian Harder (176,500) Matt Marafioti (147,500) Daniel Negreanu (109,000) Jason Mercier (87,500)With Day 3 in the books, we now reach a pivotal stage of the 2012 WSOP Main Event. Only 54 more players need to bust before we hit the money at 666 players left.
The bubble is always memorable at the Main Event as players will be faced with the prospect of leaving with at least $19,227 or zilch. For players who won satellites into the Main Event that’s a pretty enormous bubble.
Beyond the bubble, this is where building a big stack can send you on your way to the final table.
Action resumes at noon local time tomorrow.
For all the action from the WSOP in Las Vegas click through to our 2012 World Series of Poker Live Coverage section, brought to you by 888poker.com.
Visit www.pokerlistings.com