Championship Event Day 3 Recap

$2000 +$200 Deep Stack No Limit Hold'em
Borgata Summer Poker Open 2010

After 14 hours of play on Day 3 only 10 players remain for the $180,595 first place prize for the Borgata Summer Poker Open Championship Event. When the dust settled it was Steven Curtin (Charlotte, NC) leading the way with nearly 1.5 million chips.

The day began with 48 players trying to make the money, but only 36 were going to cash. After going hand-for-hand for nearly 90 minutes, the bubble finally broke when Raymond Conta and his last 14k are sent to the rail in 37th place.

As expected, the next 10 eliminations went fast and furious with the short stacks that barely hung on extinguished one by one. After the final 27 redraw, there was a ton of action on table 3 as Curtin, Tyng Low, Dean Potashner and Joshua Hakakian traded large chunks of chips.

Hakakian had one foot out the door, but a river jack gave him a full house and he tripled-up through Low and Potashner who both flopped the nut straight with identical KQ hands. Curtin, Potashner and Hakakian all made it to the final 10, but Low wasn't as fortunate. The chip leader after Day 2 was eliminated in 19th place.

Surprisingly both chip leaders after Days 1A and 1B are both at the final table and both got late double-ups to stay alive. Borgata big cash game regular Billy O'Neil (1A) doubled through Hakakian when his A 10 won a coin flip vs pocket 5s, while Mike Melkersen (1B) hit a deuce on the turn against Alex Kuchik when he was dominated A 8 vs A 2.

The hand devastated Kuchik and he was eventually eliminated in 11th place by Mirza Nagji, which stopped play for the night.

Nagji had a roller coaster of a day in which he took his stack to 2 million chips, but lost one million on a big hand to Curtin, who flopped a set of kings, and dropped Nagji to 155k. He was then one of the short stacks that got on a roll and got off the deck later in the night.

Nagji worked his stack back to more than one million chips, which is the same story for Todd Geddis, who doubled through Potashner. It was blind vs blind as Geddis' 9 7 out kicked Potashner's 9 5 when both hit middle pair.

Both players have more than 1 million chips, as does Ed Corrado, the senior statesman of the group. Corrado quietly made his way through the field and took several big pots off Nagji, including one for 750k. Nagji double-barrel bluffed with 7 6 offsuit, but Corrado had a good read and took down the pot with a pair of 9s.

On the flip side, Nagji was on the winning side of arguably the biggest hand of the day when he was all-in and at risk against Melkersen. Nagji pushed on the turn and Melkersen tanked on the last hand before dinner break. Melkersen eventually folded and showed a flopped set of 9s and is crushed to see he was up against Nagji's flopped set of 2s.

Melkersen talked himself into a fold when he thought he was behind a straight. If he makes the call and avoids quad 2s on the river, Melkersen would've been close to 3 million chips and eliminated Nagji.

Later in the night, Melkersen ran pockets kings into Kuchik's pocket aces and was crippled to 90k, but managed to survive several all-ins. He and Hakakian are the two short stacks and well below the 960k chip average.

Also in the mix for the championship are John Borzio and Frank Dellaria who flew below the radar most of the day.

Play resumes 11 am Tuesday as they play for the cash, title, crystal trophy and gold bracelet.

Here's a look at the final 10.

Position-Name-Chip Count

1. Steven Curtin 1.459 million
2. Ed Corrado 1.349 million
3. Todd Geddis 1.324 million
4. Billy O'Neil 1.247 million
5. Mirza Nagji 1.136 million
6. Dean Potashner 1.09 million
7. Frank Dellaria 756k
8. John Borzio 686k
9. Michael Melkersen 429k
10. Joshua Hakakian 243k