Moreno Bags Massive Chip Leading Heading Into the Final Day
The money has been reached late on Day 2 of the €1,100 888poker Live Madrid 20th Anniversary Edition and the remaining 39 players will return to the felt tomorrow for Day 3 of the tournament. After late registration was closed, a total of 374 entries were recorded and the remaining players will be battling for the €349,241 prizepool.
The players were finally able to bag up their chips at 3 a.m. thanks to eventual chip leader Sebastian Moreno who finished the day with a healthy 2,950,000 chips. In the last hand of the night, Moreno put his opponent to the test for his entire stack and ran out a flush to eliminate Paulo Ponciano on the money bubble.
Moreno ran up a stack earlier in the day and then started to coast until the last few hands of the night. Keeping with his aggressive play style, Moreno was able to bag a massive chip lead over the rest of the field. Some of the other big stacks heading into Day 3 include Francisco Fernandez (2,080,000), Oleksii Koiev (1,850,000), Jimmy Castano (1,690,000), Vitor Pimieuto (1,400,000), and Paulo Castelo (1,315,000).
There is only one 888poker ambassador left in the field and that accomplishment goes to Ian Simpson who finished Day 2 with 415,000 chips. Simpson spent some time on the feature table when he started to run up a stack and put it in cruise control to end the night. Other 888poker team members that were not as successful throughout the day included Chris Eubank Jr, Vivian Saliba, Josh Manley, and Alexandre Mantovani who was eliminated just short of the money.
It will be a quick turnaround for the remaining players as they are due back on the felt in less than nine hours. The action is scheduled to resume at 12:00 noon local time with 18 minutes remaining in Level 21. The blinds will be 10,000/25,000 with a 25,000 big blind ante when the cards go back in the air. The current plan is to play down to a winner but there have been some talks of extending the tournament an extra day if it is prolonged.
The PokerNews staff will be back on the tournament floor to bring you all of the live updates en route to crowning a champion in the coming days.