WSOP Day 3: Rasmus running hot again

By Simon Young

Rasmus Nielsen has already had a fantastic World Series, narrowly missing out of a bracelet when he finished second in the $1,500 NL event, picking up a cool $389,500. And that cash came after a bumper payday at the EPT Copenhagen earlier this year when he finished fourth for $274,907.

Rasmus Nielsen: big stack at the start of Day 3

Now the PartyPoker qualifier from Denmark is running hot in WSOP Main Event, and looking to build on his 172,000 starting stack. rasmus, 26, plays professionally, normally $5/10$ no limit cash games on PartyPoker. “I’m feeling good,” he said before play started. “It’s my first shot at the Main Event and I want to make the most of it.”

Another of our professional qualifiers is Finland’s Mika Paasonen. He started today on 93,000 and has shown repeatedly that he has the pedigree to go deep, as he did on the recent PartyPoker Million VI cruise when he finished fourth for just under $120,000.

Mika Paasonen

He’s starting in the red section of the Amazon Room today, sat on the left of Kara Scott, who won PartyPoker’s Sports Stars Challenge III earlier this year.

Also in the field today is Sweden’s Andreas Jorbeck, who won the PartyPoker Late Night Poker event and finished sixth in the PartyPoker Million VI cruise for a total of more than $300,000. He started out with 167,200.

We’re due to play five levels today, but if we are on the bubble and playing hand-for-hand at the end, we’ll continue until the bubble bursts. If the bubble has not been reached, remaining players will be back tomorrow.

But the way the field is already cannibalising itself, the bubble may arrive quicker than expected. It took just 15 seconds for the first cry of “All in and call”, following by many more pinging around the huge playing arena.

Out of 1,308 starters today, we’re already down to 1,188 after just 40 minutes!