As play wound down on the fourth day of play at the WPT Championship the number of players left in the tournament continued to drop at a steady pace.  Steve “MrSmokey1″ Billirakis (pictured below left) had been near the top of the chip counts for most of the tournament, but 2 big pots took him from the top to eliminated in just a matter of minutes.

The massive pot that cost him a majority of his chips was against Justin Young.  After Andy Miller had opened for 80k and Billirakis called Young raised to 210k.  The action folded to Steve who made it another 300k on top and Young moved all in.  Steve quickly called and when the hands were turned up nodded his head as if he almost expected to see the aces of Young.  Billirakis had pocket kings and did not improve, seeing a pot of over 2 million chips go to Justin Young.

A few hands later Billirakis moved all in over the top of a Scotty Nguyen opening raise of 95k.  Christian “charder” Harder flat called the 540k all in and Nguyen folded the AK face up.  Billirakis had pocket jacks and Harder also had AK for a race, but one were he knew two of his outs were gone.  Even with the shortened odds he hit an ace on the flop and ended the tournament run for Billirakis in 26th place for $49,025.

Owen “Ocrowe” Crowe was able to pick up a nice pot late in the day against Jeff Madsen in the battle of the blinds.  On the 844A board Crowe check called a 255k bet from Madsen and on the river the action went check check on the river and Crowe’s AJ was good enough to pick up the pot.

With around 20 miuntes left on the clock in the last level of the day the tournament was paused and a random draw came up with 6 more hands for each table to play.  Once the six hands were complete the final 24 players were done for the day and will return tomorrow for another 5 levels or down to 10 players whichever comes first.  The first level of blinds will be 15k / 30k to start the day tomorrow.

Full chip counts will be available shortly along with the new seating draw for tomorrows action but here is a rough look at how they stacked up late in the day with Eugene Katchalov still pacing the field with over 4 million:

Christian “charder” Harder - 3 million (right)
Yevginey “Atimos” Timoshenko - 2.5 million
Owen “Ocrowe” Crowe - 1.5 million
Brian “tsarrast” Rast - 1.4 million
Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier - 1.2 million
Blake “Balla-B13″ Cahail - 1.1. million
Shannon Shorr - 1 million
Marco “CrazyMarco” Johnson - 900k

• April 22, 2009 -- Four Tables
• April 22, 2009 -- Seven Hands and a Table Break
• April 23, 2009 -- End of Day 4 Chip Counts
• April 23, 2009 -- No More Marco