The 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure has had some exciting poker to this point, and it started off with their $100k buy-in High Roller event. Now, the PCA Main Event is down to only 24 players at the end of Day 4, and one player finds himself at the top of the leaderboard and sitting pretty heading into Day 5. Faraz Jaka may not be incredibly well-known to the common poker fan, but his play has been stellar, as he has found himself almost always near the top of the leaderboard throughout this tournament, and heading into Day 5 he sits alone at the top.
Jaka has a total of 4.1 million chips, and continued to grow on his lead throughout the day. Currently, his closest competitor is Alex Fitzgerald (2.70 million), but he is still over 1.4 million chips behind Jaka. There are quite a few players who are still within striking distance of course, and one hand can change everything, but it’s hard not to like the way that Jaka is playing currently. To round out the top five, you’ll find Phil D’Auteuil with 2.28 million, Anthony Gregg with 2.14 million, and Byron Kaverman with 2.13 million chips. Close behind is Sam Greenwood in 6th with 2.10 million chips, but after that the remainder of the field finds themselves below 2 million chips.
As far as other players who are remaining in the field, there is one female player remaining, as Xuan Liu is sitting with over one million chips, at 1,082,000. Liu has been impressive in this past year, as she had some nice cashes at the World Series of Poker, and also had a third place finish at the European Poker Tour’s San Remo event. Some of the other players that you may know by name are Daniel Shiff with 834k, Ruben Visser with 461k, and David Peters 424k, who all have a shot to be able to make a run when it matters most.
Something interesting to note about the event in terms of players who were sent home already, was that well-known golfer Sergio Garcia took his seat, and even made a run into Day 4! He was eliminated though when his A-J couldn’t catch up to the pocket queens of his opponent. Garcia did make it into the top 50 though, and took home a payout of $35k for his efforts. Other well-known players who have been sent home are Galen Hall, Chris Klodnicki, and Arnaud Mattern. Barry Greenstein also has been sent home, but he made it into the cash, as he finished in 25th place and took home $46k.
Action will continue at Noon local time on Thursday, and players will play down until we have a final table set.