On Tuesday, 2,219 survivors from Day 1A and Day 1B of the World Series of Poker Main Event reconvened at the Rio for Day 2AB – with the short stacks hoping to rebound, and the big stacks looking to build.
One of those big stacks was owned by Lawrence Bayley, who entered the day sitting in third place on the leaderboard. Playing in his first Main Event, the Londoner managed to keep accumulating, and per the live updates provided by PokerNews, he used a flopped two pair with ace-eight late in the night to move his stack to the 618,000-chip mark.
That tops the counts for Day 2AB, with the top 10 rounding out as follows: Mickey Craft (608,100), Sergio Castelluccio (548,500), Michael Sklenicka (540,600), Joseph Conor (511,100), Jessica Ngu (481,500), Koen Breed (480,800), Grayson Ramage (471,000), Larry Smalley (469,000), and Jared Hamby (455,000).
Many notable names bagged a stack for Day 3, including Marvin Rettenmaier (359,100), Charlie Carrel (343,000), Kenny Hallaert (331,800), Cherish Andrews (330,700), Melanie Weisner (319,400), Mike Matusow (228,200), Chris Vitch (221,200), Scott Seiver (195,600), 2005 Main Event champion Joe Hachem (134,700), and 2004 Main Event Sportsbook Greg Raymer (106,400).
Among those who saw their Main Event dreams cut short yesterday was one of the few players on the planet who knows just how living that dream truly feels.
Defending champion Qui Nguyen found himself at the televised feature table in the day’s early going, and he employed the same unpredictable style that propelled him to the world championship last summer.
Unfortunately for Nguyen, however, he couldn’t fade the deck after getting his stack in with Kh-Qc on the 10s-Ks-7c-8c board, with pro James Akenhead wielding Qs-7s. Both players paired up on the flop, but Akenhead could still find a spade flush or a seven to send Nguyen packing – and the river delivered the Js to end Nguyen’s repeat bid early.
Two other former Main Event Sportsbooks lost the last of their chips yesterday, as 2002 champ Robert Varkonyi and 2010 champ Jonathan Duhamel hit the rail.
Gaelle Baumann – who was the star of the show on Day 1 when she turned quad sevens to eliminate Vanessa Selbst and her pocket aces turned top boat – saw her aces cracked this time. Other pros sent home early include Ole Schemion, Christian Harder, Phil Laak, Ronnie Bardah, and Brian Yoon.
Wednesday brings back the remaining field from the massive Day 1C, with Jerome Brion leading 3,330 hopefuls with 247,900 chips.
Day 2C kicks off at 12 noon Las Vegas local time, with live streamed coverage provided (via $9.99 subscription) by PokerGo between 2:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., before ESPN takes over coverage from 8 to 10 p.m.
