Knocked down even further to just 130,000 in chips early in the day, “Mad Marvin” did much better than stay alive though.
The Party Poker pro made an incredible comeback, mostly at the expense of Sam El Sayed, to not only make the final table but sit in third overall with a healthy stack of over 2 million.
Trailing chip leader Ran Azor by just 400k heading into the final table tomorrow, Rettenemaier not only guaranteed himself a $50k+ payday he now has a shot at back-to-back WPT titles and his second in just three months.
Back-to-Back Champ for First Time Ever?
With a win tomorrow Rettenmaier can become the first-ever back-to-back WPT champion.
Taking a break for the World Series of Poker, the last WPT event played was the WPT Championship at the Bellagio in May which Rettenmaier won for $1.2 million.
The only downside of Rettenmaier's comeback today?
Making the final table ruins his plans for making the trip to the States to play the opening day of the WPT Parx Event starting Friday:
Boooom!!!!! 22>a6s of Erik for 800k pot and BackToBack @worldpokertour Final Tables!!! 2,02mio!!! Avg 1,65... U MAD!?!?!
— Marvin Rettenmaier (@MadMarvin) August 8, 2012Won't be able to play 1a of @worldpokertour Parx now which obviously drastically reduces my chances for BackToBackToBack Final Tables! FML!
— Marvin Rettenmaier (@MadMarvin) August 8, 2012Cajelais, El Sayed Fall Short
Two players who looked like virtual locks to make the final table yesterday came up short today as Erik Cajelais and Sam El Sayed both couldn’t hold to their chip advantages.
El Sayed, who started off strong but lost a lot of his stack to Rettenmaier, eventually dropped out in 11th place for a $19,110 payday.
Cajelais, the chip leader heading into the day, took the slow bleed approach before eventually busting to Rettenmaier in seventh to fall just short of the final table.
Cajelais earned $43,690 for his seventh-place finish.
Robert Mizrachi, also up among the chip leaders yesterday, finished in 15th place.
Final Table Goes Tomorrow at Merit Cyprus
Final-table action is set to pick up from WPT Cyprus at 1 pm local time; follow along with the WPT live updates team here and catch the live stream with commentary from Jesse May, Michael Mizrachi and Dominik Nitsche.
Here’s the final six and chip counts:
1. Ran Azor 2,405,000 2. Artur Voskanyan 2,003,000 3. Marvin Rettenmaier 2,002,000 4. Kyril Radzivonau 1,865,000 5. Victor Parashiv 1,115,000 6. Joseph El Khoury 435,000Visit www.pokerlistings.com