by Mario Alfonsi | Published on Feb 10, 2012 | Updated on Feb 10, 2012The final six players at the World Poker Tour Venice Main Event will return to fight for a title and a €229,800 first prize Friday, with Andrea Dato holding a significant chip lead heading into the final day of play.Action at WPT Venice has been fast and furious over the tournament’s first four days. The event started with 155 players, but it took just two days of play to cut the field to 27. After Day 3, only nine players remained, setting up a very short day of play Sunday when the field needed to be cut down to the televised WPT final table of six players.For Dato, an Italian poker pro, his great run marks the second straight year in which he has made the final table of WPT Venice. He’ll be looking to improve on last December’s result, when he finished in 4th place. Dato enters the final table with nearly 1.6 million chips, and is the only player with a stack of over 1 million.But Dato isn’t the only player at the final table with recent success on the World Poker Tour. In second chip position is Simon Ravnsbaek, who will come into Friday’s play with 922,000 in chips. Ravnsbaek had a breakout year in 2011, winning nearly $400,000 in total prize money. That included a 3rd place finish at WPT Vienna, which earned him €169,690.Just behind Ravnsbaek is Rinat Bogdanov, who has 907,000 in chips, who will be looking to score his first major live cash after some limited success in Cyprus last year. The other three members of the final table will come into the table with much shorter stacks, including Alessandro Longobardi (558,000), Andrea Carini (347,000), and Gianluca Trebbi (343,000).Finally table play begins at 14:00 local time on Friday, and will continue until a winner is crowned. Each player who reached the final table is guaranteed at least €32,195.
