The ninth day of the 2024 World Series of Poker Main Event ended the championship dreams of six players, and with one more day to play a field that was once 10,112 players is now down to just three title hopefuls: Sweden’s Niklas Astedt, and Americans Jonathan Tamayo and Jordan Griff.
Astedt, the online poker legend best known as ‘Lena900,’ will take the chip lead into Day 10 of the 2024 WSOP Main Event with 223,000,000, but in what’s almost certainly one of the closest three-handed races to close out a WSOP Main Event in history, Tamayo’s 197,000,000 and Griff’s 187,000,000 have both other players directly in the mix. Each is guaranteed $4 million, with $6 million for second place and a first-place prize of $10 million and a customized WSOP bracelet.
Griff entered Day 9 as the chip leader, but Astedt surged into the chip lead on the strength of busting out two of the most experienced players at the final table – Joe Serock in 8th, and Brian Kim in 7th – in a matter of just seven hands.
Astedt’s stack took a dip over the next several hours, but on the strength of eliminating Jason Sagle in fourth place to end the action on Tuesday night at Horseshoe Las Vegas – his fourth elimination of the night – Astedt will begin three-handed play with a slight advantage over his two remaining opponents.
“I think things went very well, under the circumstances,” said Astedt. “I had 240 [million] early on when we were six- and seven-handed, I lost a few pots and ended somewhere on my top peak.”
For Astedt, who has well into eight figures worth of confirmed lifetime online tournament earnings including multiple PokerStars WCOOP and SCOOP titles, the pace of playing 10 days of the Main Event has been quite slow in comparison to multi-tabling a dozen or more games at once. But there has been one significant positive – sweating out the all-ins with his friends and family crowded around him for support.
“It’s among the coolest things I’ve ever done in poker, for sure.”
And while Astedt has largely shied away from the poker spotlight, preferring the far more subdued environment of playing online poker at home, he feels as though he has handled the biggest stage and publicity that poker has to offer as well as ever could have expected.
“It’s not my favorite thing to do, but I’m just proud that I have been able to stay composed and play my game,” said Astedt. “But today, I enjoyed it a lot. I mean, it was so much fun. I’m so happy everyone came.”
Tamayo, who will begin action on Wednesday in second place, entered the night in a far different circumstance. He started in seventh place and at one point sat in last place during nine-handed play. But then Tamayo picked up his first double of the day via Griff with a superior ace holding through the runout and remained steady until the field was reduced to six.
Griff had Tamayo down to the river with only six outs to hit, as his 
trumped Tamayo’s 
, but after an 
flop and 
turn, the 
river saved Tamayo’s tournament and sent him on a skyward trajectory up the chip counts.
Then, in one of the two biggest pots of the tournament so far, Tamayo flopped a straight with 
while Astedt flopped a set of 10s. Tamayo check-called all in on the river to secure a double to over 100 million in chips.
Astedt picked off Andres Gonzalez in sixth place in a coinflip, as his spiked an 
on the flop to defeat Gonzalez’s pocket jacks, and then Tamyo got into the mix once more. In the first of two eerily similar spots, Boris Angelov folded himself down to a point where he couldn’t protect his hand, and despite a strong advantage with pocket sixes against Tamayo’s 
, a king on the flop and turn had Angelov drawing dead going into the river.
After a day in which almost all of the key pots he played went his way, Tamayo was riding high into the finale of the 2024 WSOP Main Event.
“It’s a dream,” said Tamayo. “Because you can prepare all you want, you may never get to this spot. And when you get to a stage like this, you kind of look around, you take it in as like, ‘I’m at the final table of the Main Event of the World Series of Poker,’ and then it’s time to get to work. One more day of work and then I can relax a little bit after that. Whatever happens, happens.”
As far as what lies ahead, Tamayo feels ready no matter what Wednesday might bring.
“I’m probably fresher than I thought I’d be,” said Tamayo. “It’s three-handed in the World Series of Poker Main Event, so whomever’s at the table, let’s go. I don’t care.”
Finally, there’s Griff. He entered Day 9 with the chip lead, and despite scoring the first knockout of the day saw quite a few all-ins go against him on Tuesday. He still managed to win enough pot and apply enough pressure to keep himself firmly in contention in a three-way race.
“It’s been a long nine days,” said Griff. “I can’t believe I’m saying I’m going into Day 10. But I’m going to try and get well rested and come in fresh tomorrow. I made some great pay jumps, I’m down to three people and I increased my chip stack. That’s everything I ever wanted.”