After coming into the day as the short stack things started slowly for Josh Arieh.  He wasn’t invovled in many pots early on and it looked like Steve “MrTimCaum” O’Dwyer was the short stack that was going to assert himself and make a move.  O’Dwyer ended up busting and since then Arieh has went on a tear, going from bottom to top and taking a chip lead with over 7 million chips now in his stack.  Danny Alaei is second in chips, but trails Arieh by over 2 million chips.

Arieh (right) got the ball rolling by winning a coinflip to double up against Scotty Nguyen when he was all in preflop with pocket sevens against the AJ of Nguyen.  After doubling his shortstack Josh went on to win a handful of pots to build his stack, making an impressive call along the way with ace high.

Faraz “The-Toilet” Jaka (left) had opened for 300k with the blinds at 60k / 120k and a 10k ante and Arieh called from the small blind.  On the T74 flop Josh check called a 575k bet from Jaka to see the K turn where both players checked.  On the T river Arieh again checked over to Jaka who fired out 700k.  After a short pause Arieh made the call with only the A9 for only ace high.  Jaka’s hand was never shown and the ace high call sent a pot worth over 3 million chips to Josh Arieh and boosted his stack to almost 6 million while dropping Jaka to around 4 million.

While Arieh continued to chip up, a lot of it came at the expense of Jaka.  After falling all the way down to 2 million chips Faraz ended up all in against Danny Alaei.  With the blinds up to 80k / 160k and a 15k ante Jaka moved all in for 2.1 million chips from under the gun and the action folded to Alaei in the big blind.  Danny took a while but ended up making the call with the A9 but had run into the QQ of Jaka.  The board ran out K6437 and with that Faraz doubled back to over 4 million while Danny fell to the bottom of the chip counts after holding the lead not too long ago.

Chip Counts:
Josh Arieh - 8.8 million
Faraz “The-Toilet” Jaka - 4.3 million
Shawn Buchanan - 2.9 million
Scotty Nguyen - 2 million
Danny Alaei - 1.7 million

• December 19, 2009 -- O’Dwyer Out 6th
• December 19, 2009 -- ODwyer Active Early
• December 19, 2009 -- Doyle Brunson FDWPC Final Table Gallery
• December 20, 2009 -- Busto: Nguyen 5th, Buchanan 4th