Day 2 Concludes with Dorfman on Top
Day 2 of the 2011 Aussie Millions Main Event has come to a close here at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia. When the day began, 265 players returned to action from the starting field of 721. At the end of the night, 76 of them remained just four spots off the money, which is set at 72. Leading them all is Randy Dorfman with 581,000 in chips.
As with all tournaments, not everyone can survive and with those that leave us there's always notables in the mix. Today, we lost Full Tilt Pros Chris Ferguson, Scott Montgomery, Melanie Weisner, Roberto Romanello, Erik Cajelais, Cyril Andre and Roland de Wolfe. We also lost the living great Phil Ivey in what was the most exciting pot of the tournament by far. Both for the size of it and the two players it involved -- Ivey and Patrik Antonius.
Antonius opened with a raise to 8,000 from early-middle position and Ivey called from the big blind. Pretty innocent, right? Well, after the flop came down 
, the two trains smacked dead on traveling at 200 miles per hour!
After Ivey checked, Antonius bet out 15,000. Ivey didn't want to play for that much and made it 50,000 to go. Antonius thought and then moved all in for 197,500. Ivey quickly called him.
Ivey turned over a dream hand on that flop, 
, for top pair, the nut kicker and the ace-high flush draw. Antonius also flopped what he thought was the dream with the 
, picking up an open-ended straight flush draw. Little did he know, he only had eight outs because of Ivey's hand.
When the chips went in a massive crowd gathered around the table and the hard rail was pressed inward as people tried to get a closer look at the action. The dealer burned and dealt the 
on the turn to give Antonius his straight. His still wasn't out of the woods yet though as Ivey could hit a flush to retake the lead.
The river completed the board with the 
and missed Ivey. The crowd watched with jaws on the floor as Ivey sent over all but 13,000 of his chips to Antonius, who calmy turned his head to the right and leaned back to check on the tennis action going on. He finished watching the current point before turning back and stacking his chips.
Ivey was eliminated shortly thereafter while that pot put Antonius over 400,000 and he finished out the day with 428,500. Fellow Team Full Tilt-ers Howard Lederer and Erick Lindgren wrapped up with 181,500 and 264,000, respectively. Some of the other notable big stacks in the room include Michael Ryan (547,500), Sorel Mizzi (489,000), Randy Lew (484,000), [Removed:248] (434,000), Haibo Chu (431,000) and Carter Phillips (307,500).
The remaining players will return on Thursday and play will begin a 12:30 P.M. local time. Be sure to head right back here to PokerNews for all the live coverage straight from the floor. We promise you the bubble will burst tomorrow and you won't want to miss out on that!