The total 195 person field of the World Poker Tour World Championship after 3 full days of play, has been reduced down to only 35, yet there are still more top pros involved then can easily be listed.  However, if one were to bother compiling such a list of survivors the player at the top of that list would be Shawn Buchanan, a former WPT champion with nearly $2 million in tournament cashes, who also happens to have held the chip lead after Day 1 of this event, and was in a close second place on Day 2. 

Now with 3 Days completed at the Bellagio, Buchanan has an even bigger lead over the remaining field- and clearly the skills to wield it- however he also still has to contend with such top players as Phil Hellmuth, David Williams, Todd Terry, Brian Lemke, David Benyamine, Scotty Nguyen, Matt Stout and yesterday’s chip leader and the front runner for the WPT Player of the Year race, Faraz Yaka, all of whom have above average chip stacks themselves.

Only about half of those remaining players will be able to make the money today when the WPT World Championship continues, and until that 19th person busts all of these top pros, despite their starting day stacks, are in real danger of suffering the same fate as Justin Bonomo, Kathy Liebert, Jonathan Little, Prahlad Friedman, Robert Mizrachi, Howard Lederer, Brandon Cantu and Hoyt Corkins, who all busted yesterday after playing for quite some time, with no cash to show for their efforts.

For more information on the WPT World Championship, or to read live updates and chip counts when play resumes today at noon Vegas time, visit www.worldpokertour.com.