#TheCupAwaits One of Just 24 Players in the WPT Legends of Poker Main Event; JC Tran Leads

Twenty-four players remain in the Season XVI WPT Legends of Poker Main Event from The Bicycle Hotel & Casino in Southern California. Those players were part of a 763-entry starting field that proved the second largest tournament field ever for the WPT Legends of Poker Main Event. Each are guaranteed a payday of $17,430, but it’s the $653,692 up top that they’re all truly chasing.

The player best positioned to take home the title, which also comes with a $15,000 seat into the season-ending WPT Tournament of Champions and a luxurious Hublot Big Bang Steel watch, is the one and only JC Tran. Tran bagged up a field-leading stack of 3.061 million in chips, which was nearly 1 million more than his closest competitor, Steven Tabb on 2.128 million.

Tran boasts a career with $12.575 million in live tournament earnings, of which more than $4 million has come from the World Poker Tour alone, including two WPT titles. Five players share the record for the most WPT titles ever — Gus Hansen, Carlos Mortensen, Anthony Zinno, Chino Rheem, and Darren Elias — and Tran could join the prestigious group with a victory here at The Bicycle Hotel & Casino.

“It would be special to win this one,” Tran told WPT.com after play on Tuesday. “I’ve had this phrase in my head of chasing number three, and that applies for the WPT and the WSOP bracelet, so I’ve been chasing that. I’ve made a lot of deep runs here at The Bike. I think I stone-cold bubbled this one last year with a lot of chips, and the prior years I cashed and made it deep and didn’t finish. I think this is the year, and to win the tournament that paid out the billionth dollar, that would be really cool.”

Interestingly enough, Tran isn’t the only two-time WPT Champions Club member chasing a third WPT title. Also remaining in the Season XVI WPT Legends of Poker Main Event field of 24 is Tuan Le and Marvin Rettenmaier.

Phil Hellmuth, the newly announced WPT Raw Deal analyst, advanced to Day 4 with a stack of 790,000. He’s just below average in chips, but will be working with nearly 40 big blinds to start in the quest for his first-ever World Poker Tour title. Hellmuth does have four official WPT final table finishes amongst 13 cashes on the WPT Main Tour. His largest score came from Season II at the WPT World Poker Finals at Foxwoods in Connecticut. He took third place in that event for $281,700. To date, Phil has won $1,111,260 on the WPT Main Tour, not including the prize money he has earned here.

The plan for Day 4 will be to play down to the televised WPT final table of six, and play won’t stop until that has been reached. Once again, the Action Clock by Protection Poker will be in play, as it will for the duration of the tournament. On Day 3, players began the Action Clock portion of the event with four 30-second time-extension chips. For Day 4, the final 24 players will reset to a fresh batch of six time-extension chips. Players that reach the final table will reset to a fresh eight.

The cards will be in the air at 12 p.m. PT for the Season XVI WPT Legends of Poker Main Event at The Bicycle Hotel & Casino. Keep your browser pointed right here to WPT.com for all the coverage you can handle as we approach the crowning of the next WPT champion!

Photography by Joe Giron / PokerPhotoArchive.com

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