Michael Gentili Bags Up Huge Lead over PSCB ME Field

Day 4 of the 2017 PokerStars Championship Bahamas Main Event returned to action with 32 players and after four levels of play the field is halved to the final 16 players. Michael Gentili finished the day with a huge lead over the field with 3.7 million.

Alesksei Opalikhin bagged up in second place with 2.08 million – more than the average stack behind Gentili. Nady Magnus (1.8 million), Cliff Josephy (1.3 million), Christian Harder (1.3 million) and John Dibella (1.2 million) round out the top ten stacks.

Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier returns as the shortest stack with 340,000 and is gunning for his fourth major PokerStars title. 2013 WSOP Main Event champ Ryan Riess has a little more than a big blind than Mercier to start the day.

Moving forward each player has $24,640 locked up, but there’s a significant pay jump after the first elimination to $32,200. The final six players lock up six-figures each on Saturday with $103,780 but they’re playing for the $480,012 first-place prize.

Nick Maimone returned as the chip leader on his 30th birthday but he couldn’t hold on to the momentum and fell short.

— FU_15 (@FU_15) January 12, 2017

Pratyush Buddiga, Daniel Weinman, Byron Kaverman and Jamie Staples were eliminated in virtually that order early in the day. Adrian Mateos bowed out in 18th place and Rex Clinkscales was the final elimination of the day in 17th place.

Play resumes at noon Friday and the field will play down to a final table of six.

Day 4 Top Ten Chip Counts

1. Michael Gentili – 3,708,000
2. Aleksei Opalikhin – 2,084,000
3. Nadya Magnus – 1,870,000
4. Michael Vela – 1,811,000
5. Rodrigo Cordoba – 1,777,000
6. Cliff Josephy – 1,331,000
7. Rasmus Glaesel – 1,319,000
8. Christian Harder – 1,305,000
9. John Dibella – 1,294,000
10. Allon Allison – 1,015,000