Day 2 In The Books!
We came into today’s Day 2 expecting plenty of action, and boy we were not disappointed! We started off the day with 105 entrants, and after 10 full levels of play, we are down to our final 15 players. Our end of day chip leader is Gregory Brooks, who ended up bagging a whopping 1,294,000. He is followed closely by David Chiu, who has 891,000.
Brooks was involved in several big hands today, but none was bigger than the shocking elimination of bracelet winner and Day 1 chip leader Vanessa Selbst in 18th place. From late position, Selbst raised it up to 18,000 preflop and got a call from Steven Merrifield in the cutoff and Greg Brooks in the big blind. The flop came down 
and Brooks bet out 38,000. Selbst in middle position then raised it to 104,000 and Merrifield folded. Brooks thought about it for a little while and then re-raised to 203,000. Selbst then re-raised the pot and Brooks called putting her all in.
Selbst turned over 
for a trip threes with the ace kicker, and Brooks showed 
for trip threes with a king kicker.
It all changed on the turn though when the 
fell and gave Brooks a full house. Selbst cringed as she realized her fate, and the river 
sent her to the rail in 18th place.
David Chiu also played a massive pot with Erick Lindgren that changed the course of the tournament. Lindgren limped under the gun, and Michael McDonald made it 36,000. David Chiu called, as did Lindgren. The flop came 
, and Chiu immediately fired out four green chips, a 100,000 bet. Lindgren thought for about 15 seconds before announcing "raise the pot." McDonald quickly got out of the way, and it went back to Chiu. Chiu went in the tank for about a minute, and found out that Lindgren barely had him covered. Finally, Chiu started to slide his stack in the middle, saying "well I know you have the straight flush outs Erick cause I have top set." Erick called, and sure enough, Chiu was right.
Lindgren: 
Chiu: 
The turn brought the , giving Lindgren the flush, but he still had to avoid the board pairing. Well he couldn't, as it came the 
. Chiu collected the pot, upping his stack to over 1 million, while Lindgren was crippled, then eliminated on the next hand.
Brooks and Chiu aren’t the only big names left. In fact, a majority of the players left are household names, including David Ulliot, Michael McDonald, Peter Jetten, Jason Mercier, Chris Moorman, and Jared Bleznick.
Some big names who fell short of the money were Shaun Deeb, Brian Rast, Praz Bansi, Josh Arieh, and Joe Hachem. Meanwhile, the likes of Joseph Cheong, Layne Flack, Isaac Baron, Emil Patel, and Jeff Lisandro all cashed, but didn’t make it to Day 3.
The 15 remaining players will return tomorrow at 2:30 local time to hopefully play down to a winner. Will Gregory Brooks, the winner of the 2011 LA Poker Classic, complete the second leg of the coveted triple crown in four months’ time? Will Jason Mercier or David Ulliot get their second bracelet? Or David Chiu his fifth? Or will one of the relative unknowns top this start studded final day. Tune in tomorrow as Pokernews will be providing you with all of the action as we find out who the next bracelet winner will be!