WSOP Day 5: Kenna makes another big laydown

Simon Young

While James McManus remains stable on over 3 million chips, Stephen Kenna is down to 300,000 and in need of some decent cards. He could well have been out in the third level of the day, but he made a huge laydown with Q-Q to K-K before the flop. Yesterday he laid down K-K to A-A pre-flop, so his radar is well tuned.

James and Stephen, both from Dublin in Ireland, have been sharing the same table all day. It’s been a good-humoured table – and they have all agreed to a rule that if anyone has A-Q pre-flop, then they have to show it to the rest of the table once the hand is over.

We’re now down to just 98 players from the 6,844 who started way back last week, and all those remaining, including our two qualifiers James and Stephen, are guaranteed $51,466. Someone with probably too much time on their hands has worked out that if all the remaining players chopped, they’d each get $476,275!

It’s not been a good day so far for the big-name professionals. Gus Hansen, Allen Cunningham, Shawn Sheikhan, Jeff Madsen and Hoyt Corkins are among those to have bitten the dust. Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow and Mark Vos are still in the hunt.

Kara Scott 

Also out in 104th place after a tremendous run was Kara Scott, the Canadian TV presenter who now lives in the UK, and who won this year’s PartyPoker Sports Stars Challenge III.