John DuBois Leads On Day 3, Dangerous Field Lurking

The money bubble is behind the remaining 52 players in the WPT Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open and play shifts toward the business end of the tournament on Day 3 in Hollywood, FL. John DuBois surged late on Day 2 to bag the chip lead of 1.715 heading into today’s restart. DuBois’ lead is far from safe when play restarts with a tough group of pros trailing behind him.

Home felt advantage is playing to the favor of DuBois, who hails from South Florida and spends most of his poker playing time at the Hard Rock.

“I generally do well at the Hard Rock tournaments here at this location. For some reason, I always do horribly out in Vegas at the WSOP events,” DuBois told WPT.com.

DuBois is looking to top his career-high score of more than $30,000 that resulted from a $570 DeepStack event held at the Hard Rock in March 2017.

Regarding the tough field remaining, all DuBois has to do is look one seat over to see one of the three Champions Club members remaining in Season XVII WPT Borgata Poker Open winner Erkut Yilmaz, who starts play with 520,000 chips. Yilmaz can overtake Tony Ruberto for pole position in the Hublot WPT Player of the Year standings by placing at least sixth which would be his second final table of the season.

Also at the starting table of DuBois is the fearsome Farid Jattin, who is in the hunt for his fourth career WPT final table and has 1.38 million chips at his disposal.

The other two Champions Club members in the Day 3 field are Jonathan Jaffe (1.15 million) and Ravi Raghavan (215,000).

All three WPT Champions are looking to etch their name on the Champions Cup for the second time.

Another interesting story at play is Mike Newman. Last year, Newman won the Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open Main Event at the Hard Rock for $374,240 against a star-studded final table that included Champions Club members Matas Cimbolas and Darryll Fish along with Ari Engel, Shaun Deeb, and Tom Marchese. Newman starts Day 3 with 470,000 chips and title experience on his side. A final table this week would be Newman’s first on the WPT Main Tour and he spoke to Sean Chaffin about wanting to defend his title.

Joe McKeehen (1.27 million) and David Peters (270,000) finished 13th and 18th, respectively, in that event last year and are deep once again. McKeehen is playing to reach his fifth career WPT final table while Peters will need to spin to reach number three.

In Season XVI, McKeehen took second in Hublot Player of the Year honors to Art Papazyan and a strong finish this week would propel him up the Season XVII leaderboard.

Day 3 opens with all players guaranteed at least $9,895 and the payouts escalate all the way toward the $504,820 first-place prize and seat in the season-ending WPT Baccarat Crystal Tournament of Champions. The five levels today are 90-minutes each and the remaining players at the end of the night return to play on Day 4 to get down to Wednesday’s final table.

The Action Clock presented by Protection Poker is in play and players will reset to six time chips when play hits the final three tables.

Play starts at 12 p.m. and all coverage can be found on WPT.com.

Photography by Joe Giron / PokerPhotoArchive.com

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