Craft Turns Drunken All-Nighter Into Top Stack in WSOP Main Event

Ohio poker player Mickey Craft showed up for Day 4 of the WSOP Main Event an hour late, still drunk from the night before and proceeded to run up a massive stack.

Danielle “Dmoongirl” Andersen was at the table and tweeted updates on Craft’s erratic play through the day.

Her first tweet said Craft showed up to claim his 1.2 million stack, announced to the table he was still drunk and had slept for 45 minutes and then pulled off a big bluff with nine-deuce off-suit to take down his first pot of the day.

Later, Craft was moved to the feature table broadcast live on ESPN and PokerGO.

He went on to have a rollercoaster day, finishing the night by winning a massive 1.6 million chip pot against Travis Lutes to jump up to 3 million but dropping down to 2,389,000 by the time the chips went in the bag.

Craft made the final table in the $3k Limit Hold’em event earlier this summer, finishing 3rd for almost $70,000. It was by far his biggest cash, accounting for most of his $78,099 lifetime winnings.

For making Day 5 of the Main Event he’s guaranteed at least $35,267 and has a shot at up to $8.15 million should he make the final table.

Salas Leads, Comel and Hallaert Trailing

Damian Salas from Argentina finished the day with the biggest stack, bagging 4,678,000, and he’s trailed by France’s Sebastian Comel with 4,198,000.

Salas is an accomplished player with over $900k in live earnings and over $3 million in online cashes where he plays under the screen-name pampa27.

2016 November Niner Kenny Hallaert also finished with more than 4 million and he spoke to PokerListings.com earlier in the day about his third consecutive deep Main Event run.

Kenny Hallaert4

Will Kenny Hallaert repeat his Main Event final table run?

Here’s the unofficial top ten chip counts courtesy of WSOP.com:

Damian Salas - 4,678,000
Sebastian Comel - 4,198,000
Kenny Hallaert - 4,145,000
JP Kelly - 3,923,000
Richard Gryko - 3,559,000
Cosmin Joldis - 3,518,000
Colin Moffat - 3,086,000
Jonas Mackoff - 3,076,000
Eyal Maaravi - 3,030,000
Valentin Messina - 2,979,000

A long list of other well-known players built big stacks on Day 4, including former November Niner Antoine Saout, Brit Charlie Carrel and and Kathy Liebert, the first woman to ever win a $1 million prize in poker.

Everyone who played today had already earned a spot in the money but, unfortunately for 787 players, a lot of them busted short of the big prizes waiting higher up the payout ladder.

Among those busted were Barry Greenstein, Barny Boatman, Dutch Boyd, Scott Seiver, Anatoly Filatov, Nam Le, Michael Tureniec, Nick Schulman, Gavin Smith, Matt Glantz, Jeff Lisandro and Sofia Lovgren.

Tomorrow the remaining 297 players will return at 11am to play deeper into the money.

The final nine players will be decided on July 17 and the final table will play out over three days July 20-22.

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