Alexandre Le Vaillant Leads the Pack Going into Day 3 of the Main Event
Day 2 of the 2023 Unibet DeepStack Open Marrakech Main Event Has Reached a Conclusion. After nearly 11 full levels, Alexandre Le Vaillant managed to bag the biggest stack, finishing the night with 5,495,000, worth 110 big blinds going into Day 3. Le Vaillant's closest competitors are Kaddour (5,200,000) and Samuel Baruk (2,955,000).
Chip Counts Going into Day 3
| Rank | Name | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alexandre Le Vaillant | 5,495,000 | 110 |
| 2 | Kaddour | 5,200,000 | 104 |
| 3 | Samuel Baruk | 2,955,000 | 59 |
| 4 | Jeremie Canetti | 2,820,000 | 56 |
| 5 | Julien Vecchioli | 2,755,000 | 55 |
| 6 | Soufiane Masasedek | 2,415,000 | 48 |
| 7 | Mounir Acharki | 2,340,000 | 47 |
| 8 | Henri Dupont | 2,200,000 | 44 |
| 9 | Alexandre Hobam | 2,005,000 | 40 |
| 10 | Tristan Forge | 1,700,000 | 34 |
| 11 | Guillaume Darcourt | 1,630,000 | 33 |
| 12 | Salem Sahed | 1,500,000 | 30 |
| 13 | Adrien Amorella | 1,355,000 | 27 |
| 14 | Mathieu Di Meglio | 1,100,000 | 22 |
| 15 | Yoan Blanc | 875,000 | 18 |
| 16 | Azzedine Smie | 760,000 | 15 |
Le Vaillant started the day with a below-average stack but steadily accumulated chips throughout the early levels of the day before going on a tear towards the end of the night, particularly in one hand where he delivered a brutal cooler with a flopped set against the flopped two-pair of Maskhaoui Mohamed Amine in a pot worth nearly 4,000,000 chips to surge up the chip counts.
The French player has over $500,000 in career tournament earnings, and a win in this event would be his second-best career tournament score, with his biggest cash earlier this year in Las Vegas for just over $80,000 USD.
French professional poker player Guillaume Darcourt also bagged a stack of 1,630,000 to end the night. Darcourt is no stranger to deep runs in these events, with numerous final table appearances from events all over the world, including a third-place finish in a WSOP international circuit event earlier this year for nearly MAD 300,000 (approximately €30,000) and a first-place finish a few days later in another ring event for MAD 230,000 (approximately €23,000).
Day 2 Action
Play began at a very fast pace today, with 161 players starting the day and the money bubble being reached after just four hours, at which point the remaining 95 players were guaranteed a min-cash of at least MAD 12,000. "Belmehdi" was the unfortunate soul to burst the bubble today when his pocket-queens were cracked by a straight draw held by Nicolas Maquerre.
Day 1a chip leader Linda Hamdi had a roller coaster day today, dominating the early levels only to lose several big pots near the bubble, at one point being reduced from 1,100,000 to 100,000 only to get all those chips back shortly afterwards. She finally hit the rail after running pocket aces into Ali Alawadhi's set of fives.
Notables to make the money but fall short of Day 3 include Unibet Team Pros David Lappin, (67th, MAD 14,000) Alexandre Reard (45th - MAD 19,000) and Sonny Franco (38th - MAD 21,500).
Play will resume tomorrow with twenty minutes left on Level 24 where the blinds are 25,000/50,000. As it is the final day play will only conclude once a winner is crowned. Stay tuned to PokerNews until a new champion is crowned at the beautiful Es Saadi Resort!