World Poker Tour World Championship Day 2: Mosseri the Man to Catch
Players returned to action on Sunday for Day 2 of the World Poker Tour World Championship held at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. On Day 1, 195 players signed up for the event, but registration remained open through three more levels on Day 2. With the extra time, the field grew to 220 players. When the final late entrants were registered and bought in, the official prize pool was calculated to be $5,309,500. First place is worth a whopping $1,619,344 and second place will also earn over one million dollars. As it stands at the end of the second day of play, Abe Mosseri is in pole position with 685,200 in chips.
Mosseri wasted very little time getting things moving. In the first level of the day, he got all of the money in on the flop of 10x9x8x against Kevin Saul. Saul had flopped the joint with QxJx. Mosseri held top two pair with 10x9x. Although the turn blanked and kept Saul in the lead, the river card produced a nine to pair the board and give Mosseri a full house. That pot catapulted Mosseri to the chip lead and he stayed there all day long. Saul was eliminated shortly thereafter.
Another player who had a good day on the felt was WPT Bay 101 champion Alan Sternberg. He finished the day in second place overall with 606,400 in chips, many of which came from the following hand with Shaun Deeb.
According to the WPT Live Update Team, the final board read 9♦6♠5♠10♣3♦ between Sternberg and Deeb with about 100,000 chips in the pot. Deeb was facing an all-in bet from Sternberg for 107,000 and tanked for several minutes before finally making the call. Sternberg tabled 5♣5♥ for a set of fives and Deeb mucked his hand.
Of course, not everyone had such good days on the felt. Some of those who failed to make it through the day included Vivek Rajkumar, Scotty Nguyen, Justin Bonomo, Kathy Liebert, Matt Stout, Marco Johnson, Vanessa Rousso and Mike Matusow.
Top 10 Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Abe Mosseri | 685,200 |
| 2 | Alan Sternberg | 606,400 |
| 3 | Steven Kelly | 566,500 |
| 4 | Roger Teska | 534,900 |
| 5 | Scott Seiver | 461,300 |
| 6 | Joshua Bergman | 415,600 |
| 7 | Justin Young | 414,100 |
| 8 | Robert Mercer | 408,600 |
| 9 | David Peters | 401,400 |
| 10 | Darren Elias | 342,900 |
Along with those ten players, Phil Galfond, Andy Frankenberger, Scott Clements, Barry Greenstein, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Daniel Negreanu and Tony G will all be moving on to Day 3. The remaining 116 players will return to action on Monday at 1200 PDT (1900 GMT) and you can be sure to catch the recap right here on PokerNews after the day is complete.
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