Detienne Leads Seniors Championship with 32 Left
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Day 2 of Event #17: $1,000 Seniors No-Limit Hold'em Championship resumed today with 486 players returning from a record starting field of 4,425. At the end of the day, only 32 remained in contention for the massive $627,462 top prize.
Kevin Detienne ended the day as chip leader and was close to breaking the million-chip mark, finishing with a whopping 988,000. Michael Wilson will return Sunday in second place with 714,000, and Mitchell Lehman is third with 700,000.
Detienne spoke to PokerNews at the end of the day and told us that making an ace-high flush on the river early on had built his stack up. From there, he was always in contention, playing aggressive poker and avoiding any big coin flips with stacks that could hurt him.
"I don’t like coin flips," Detienne stated emphatically.
Dennis Phillips, the third-place finisher in the WSOP Main Event in 2008, rocked a short stack for most of the day but later on he clawed his way back into contention and ended the day in seventh place with 613,000.
The money bubble burst before the end of the first level of the day, and with 468 places paid it fell to Stanley Statkiewicz to be the unfortunate player to be the last to leave with nothing to show for his valiant efforts. After the bubble burst, the dam broke and a flood of players soon began pouring towards the payout desk holding their tickets for an initial min-cash of $1,752. "Payout!" was the constant background soundtrack as dealers called out the fallen players.
A few notables managed to hang on for a bit longer, but Sammy Farha and Barny Boatman couldn’t convert their chips into a big payday. Farha ran hot at the end of Day 1 and returned as one of the top-five stacks, but after doubling up a couple of opponents he was down to below average and eventually went out when he flopped top pair only to finish second best to his opponent’s bottom set. Boatman went out when he called a shove with the 
and was up against the 
. The final board of 
saw an end to his tournament.
After six levels of play, the field was reduced to 95 and the last four levels after the dinner break quickly saw the returning bunch reduced to 32 before bagging up chips for the night.
The players return Sunday at 11 a.m. when they will play down to a winner.
The PokerNews Live Reporting team will bring you all the eliminations and up-to-date chip counts as well as hand-for-hand coverage of the final table of nine as the seniors battle it out for a WSOP bracelet and a top prize of $627,462.