2010 World Series of Poker Day 36: Tom Dwan Takes Massive Chip Lead Into Day 3 of PLO World Championship
Event #52: $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em / Six-Handed
It was a rather quick day as Event #52 played down from 18 to a final table of six players, led by 21-year-old Dan "djk123" Kelly, who has a monster chip lead with just under 6 million in chips. Joining him at the final table will be 2010 WOSP Player of the Year front-runner Frank Kassla, and Jason Somerville, Eugene Katchalov, Shawn Buchanan and Michal Thruitz.
The final table gets under way Saturday afternoon, and all six players are guaranteed a payday close to $200,000 with the winner banking $1,315,518.
It was not a good day for the few big-name pros who were left in the field as Justin Bonomo, Carlos Mortensen, Billy Jordanou, Abe Mosseri, Issach Haxton and Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu were all eliminated from action.
Follow the action live Saturday in our WSOP live reporting pages.
Event #53: $1,500 Limit Hold’em Shootout
The limit hold'em shootout has come to end with Brendan Taylor coming out victorious after beating out 548 players over three days of play. He takes home a WSOP gold bracelet and $184,950 for his efforts, which included beating his Vegas housemate Ben Yu in heads-up play.
All eyes were on the two pros, limit hold'em specialist Terrence Chan and former WPT Player of the Year Jonathan Little, when play began but unfortunately neither would get his hands on the bracelet. Chan was the first player to hit the rail, while Little, on the other hand, finished valiantly in third place, getting eliminated when his A♠Q♣ was out-flopped by Taylor's Q♥5♥ when the board came down 5♦2♣K♦J♥6♣.
Interested in how it all played out, check out the full details in our WSOP live reporting blog.
Event #54: $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em
Day 1B attracted fewer runners than we saw on Thursday, with 1,504 taking the felt for the last $1,000 event of the WSOP. With 3,844 total entrants, the prize pool has swelled to $3,459,000
It was not a day for well-known pros as the few we saw came and then went. Chris Moneymaker, Barry Shulman, Chad Brown, Men Nguyen, J.C. Tran, David Wiliams, Ken Aldridge, and Phil Ivey all hit the rail on Friday afternoon, while Andrew Talbot, Yuval Bronshtein and Team PokerStars Pros Florian Langmann and George Lind all move on to play Day 2 on Saturday afternoon.
Follow all the Day 2 action in our WSOP live reporting blog.
Event #55: $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship
After ten long levels of play, the Day 2 field has been reduced from 171 to just 33, and the man behind the mountain of chips is Tom "durrrr" Dwan who sits with almost a million in chips. By making a run in one of the last possible events, he is giving the high-stakes poker community many reasons to be worried.
If Dwan plans to win a WSOP bracelet, he'll have to beat the likes of Team PokerStars Pros Jason Mercier and Alexander Kravchenko, in addition to Daniel Alaei, Michael Binger, David Ulliot, Blair Rodman, Jordan Smith and eleven-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth.
Play gets underway at 3 p.m. and you can follow Dwan's bracelet quest in our WSOP live reporting pages.
Event #56: $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em
In eight short levels, Event #56 has whittled the field down from 1,941 to less than 600, and according to Harrah's official chip counts, Daniel Smith is leading the way with 229,000, more than double his closest competitor.
Those who still have a shot at taking down the WSOP bracelet include Isaac Baron, Court Harrington, Shane Schleger, David Singer, Mark Newhouse, Victor Ramdin, Dan Heimiller and Matt Hawrilenko. The unfortunate railbirds include Daniel Negreanu, Roland de Wolfe, Joe Hachem and many others.
Action picks up on Saturday afternoon; you can follow it all live in our WSOP live reporting pages.
On Tap
A star-studded celebrity line-up is slated to take the felt this afternoon for the $5,000 buy-in for the Ante up for Africa charity tournament. We'll be bringing you all the updates from that event right here.
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