Thomas Cannuli out early day 2 of World Series of Poker

Add Blumenfield’s 40.1 million chips and Beckley’s 23.7 million chips together, and they’re still at more than a 2-to-1 disadvantage against McKeehen. Play resumes at 6 p.m. PT on Tuesday in Las Vegas from the Penn & Teller Theater at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino and continues until a victor is determined.

Joe McKeehen eliminates the first three opponent’s to take a huge chip advantage into Day 2 of the World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table in Las Vegas.

Joshua Beckley, the 25-year old poker pro from New Jersey, is in third with 12 percent of the table’s chips having clawed up from seventh place at the start with a few hands on day two that shook up the table’s dynamic. Sunday night was the first of three days of poker-playing before crowning a new champion and awarding more than $7 million to the victor.

Steinberg’s 4th place payday was good for $2,615,361.

“This is Joe McKeehen’s Main Event”.

Neil Blumenfield competing at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, November 8, 2015.

Stern had held a long-running perch in second place and infuriated World Series of Poker viewers with his lengthy contemplation of most hands, until he swapped places with Josh Beckley, who won a face-off with a pair of aces.

One has an overwhelming lead.

Upon exiting, ESPN interviewer and poker player Kara Scott asked Steinberg, “Did you play the game that you really wanted to play?” Thus, Stern and Blumenfield didn’t want to get out of line when tangling with the chip leader.

McKeehen was characteristically nonchalant in the moments after winning.

Asked if he had any plans for his $7.68 million: not yet. He three-bet Steinberg off a superior hand early on in the session, but didn’t attempt many aggressive plays after that. A 10 appeared on the flop, giving Steinberg three-of-a-kind, and Cannuli didn’t improve on the turn or river card.

World Series of Poker tournament events began in May and continued for 51 days with 68 events, culminating with the annual Main Event.

The man to beat at the World Series of Poker Main Event had an unrivaled tower of chips by Sunday night’s end and luck on his side.

Day 3 of the November Nine will begin at 6:00pm PST with the ESPN broadcast starting half an hour later. It’s a grueling multi-day poker marathon that whittled down the competition from 6,420 entries at $10,000 each to nine players, all already guaranteed at least $1 million each.

Others eliminated Monday and Tuesday included global players Pierre Neuville of Belgium, Federico Butteroni of Italy and Ofer Svi Stern of Israel.

“I’m not happy with how I played today, but obviously it was a great run. If you had asked me four months ago about finishing third, I would have been very excited about that”, Blumenfield said. The former tech executive from San Francisco who started a company and sold it to Intuit in 2013 said he’s done with the software business.

As for his decision to ultimately spend the $10,000 to enter, “it’s one of the top ten for sure”, he said before the Main Event restarted on Monday.

While it looks like a walk in the park for McKeehen, there are actually a lot of possibilities on how things could go. Joe McKeehen applying maximum pressure by shoving into the two shortest stacks at the table, and the man with the second shortest of those stacks, Patrick Chan, made the call. But thinking the opposite way, McKeehen could just decide to raise Blumenfield’s trousers off every time, making it hard for the table’s senior to do much.

Stern, 36, of Herzliya, was the second Israeli player to make the final.