An exciting Day 2 of the $1,650 PokerStars North American Poker Tour Las Vegas Main Event wrapped up late on Thursday with 34 players remaining. Leading the way is Florida's Anthony Dianaty with a stack of 3,220,000 as the Tampa native looks to add to his $826,106 in tournament earnings.
There were plenty of well-known faces in the Day 2 field and a handful of them found bags at the end of the evening, including poker commentator Nick Schulman, Japanese poker vlogger Masato Yokosawa, Sergio Aido, Scott Ball and Matthew Wantman.
Each of the remaining players has a payday of at least $6,005 locked up and a shot at the $268,945 up top for the first NAPT champion in 12 years.
NAPT Main Event Day 2 Top 10 Chip Counts
| RANK | PLAYER | COUNTRY | CHIP COUNT | BIG BLINDS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Anthony Dianaty | USA | 3,220,000 | 129 | |
| 2 | Liran Betito | Israel | 1,885,000 | 75 | |
| 3 | Nick Schulman | USA | 1,860,000 | 74 | |
| 4 | Jonathan Borenstein | USA | 1,855,000 | 74 | |
| 5 | Scott Ball | USA | 1,785,000 | 71 | |
| 6 | Sergio Aido | Spain | 1,635,000 | 65 | |
| 7 | Aditya Prasetyo | USA | 1,435,000 | 57 | |
| 8 | Aaron Massey | USA | 1,425,000 | 57 | |
| 9 | Timothy Rutherford | Canada | 1,305,000 | 52 | |
| 10 | Ryan Yu | Canada | 1,225,000 | 49 |
Day 2 Action
There were 252 players who returned for Day 2 and each of them fought hard to make it into the money with only 159 spots paid. Some of those eliminated before the money include Ryan Laplante, Adam Hendrix, Donnie Peters, Benjamin Kaupp, Asher Conniff and $10,300 Super High Roller champion Jesse Lonis.
An early highlight of the day was Brazil's Leonardo Boen hitting quads twice in one orbit, including in a hand where he flopped quads holding pocket nines to eliminate Ukraine's Valentyn Shabelnyk.
Someone else who took a beat was Christina "Baby Shark" Gollins, whose pocket queens were outflopped by the pocket jacks of Mario Arribas to go out a few spots off the money.
Play slowed down significantly during hand-for-hand play on the money bubble and several players received doubles to make it into the money, including 2004 WSOP Main Event runner-up David Williams, Karim Ghozlani and John Morgan.
Eventually, Turbo Nguyen found himself flipping against Matthew Wantman with pocket tens against king-jack. A king on the flop gave Wantman the lead and Nguyen couldn't hit the two-outer and ran out of turbo to go out on the money bubble.
The post-bubble casualties included Andrew Moreno and Jonathan Glendinning, who were both eliminated by Girish Reknar in a massive hand that saw Reknar hitting a flush to beat out Moreno's straight and Glendinning's set, as well as David Peters, Michael Jozoff, Matthew Hunt, Hirokazu Kobayashi and Jeremy Eyer.
PokerStars Ambassador Parker Talbot had a big stack for much of the day but fell in the last level of play as he ran ace-jack into the ace-queen of Liran Betito in a blind versus blind confrontation. Fellow ambassadors Maria Konnikova and David Kaye were also unable to survive the day.
Day 3 will kick off at noon Vegas time on Level 24 with blinds of 10,000/25,000/25,000. Levels will increase to 75 minutes in duration and shot clocks will be introduced. The tournament will be streamed by PokerStars on a 30-minute delay from Day 3 on, so be sure to follow along.
NAPT Main Event Remaining Payouts
| Place | Prize | Place | Prize | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $268,945 | 18 | $10,495 | |
| 2 | $168,175 | 19 | $10,495 | |
| 3 | $120,130 | 20 | $10,495 | |
| 4 | $92,410 | 21 | $9,125 | |
| 5 | $71,080 | 22 | $9,125 | |
| 6 | $54,680 | 23 | $9,125 | |
| 7 | $42,060 | 24 | $7,935 | |
| 8 | $32,355 | 25 | $7,935 | |
| 9 | $24,885 | 26 | $7,935 | |
| 10 | $19,140 | 27 | $7,935 | |
| 11 | $19,140 | 28 | $6,905 | |
| 12 | $15,950 | 29 | $6,905 | |
| 13 | $15,950 | 30 | $6,905 | |
| 14 | $13,875 | 31 | $6,905 | |
| 15 | $13,875 | 32 | $6,005 | |
| 16 | $12,070 | 33 | $6,005 | |
| 17 | $12,070 | 34 | $6,005 |
Stay tuned as the PokerNews live reporting team will be back on-site at Resorts World tomorrow for Day 3 of the NAPT Las Vegas Main Event.
