Welcome to Day 2 of Event #55: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em. On Day 1 the tournament saw 2,396 entries trimmed to just 268 by day’s end.
Michael Malm was the overnight chip leader, stacked at 126,000. Zo Karim and Aaron Massey were close behind with 117,400 and 108,600 respectively. Other notables that finished Day 1 with chips were Brandon Cantu (96,000), Eddy Sabat (56,000) and David Pham (53,000).
The returning players will have to wait for 25 eliminations here on Day 2 to make the money. From there, they will be positioning themselves to take down part of the over $3M prize pool.
PokerNews' Live Reporting Team will be on hand to bring you Day 2 action starting at 1 p.m. local time, so stay tuned as we find out together who makes it through to the final day of Event #55.
Asi Moshe raised to 6,000 from early position and a player called from late position. Zo Karim also made the call from the big blind. The flop was and both Karim and Moshe checked. Their opponent moved all in for 46,000 and Karim quickly made the call. Moshe thought for a moment and then called as well.
The turn was the and Karim quickly moved all in and was met with a snap-call from Moshe. Moshe tabled for the nuts and Karim's was drawing dead. Their opponent's still had outs, but the completed the board and Karim took a big hit, while the all-in player was eliminated.
David Jackson opened the betting with a raise to 27,000 from the cutoff seat. Keith Wintermans was next to act on the button and he three-bet all-in for 263,000 in total. The blinds folded, but Jackson called to put Wintermans at risk.
Jackson:
Wintermans:
Jackson had his opponent outkicked and that kicker came into play when the board ran to bust Wintermans.
In a blind versus blind situation, Hans Secker got the last of his chips in with and couldn't catch up against the of Georgios Kaplas. Secker hit the rail in 21st place.
Henrick Hecklin opened from early position, Asi Moshe three-bet and James Czarnecki moved all in. Action folded back to Hecklin and he folded. Moshe made the call and revealed . Czarnecki tabled and the board ran out .
Moshe's two pair was good enough to send Czarnecki packing.
We didn't catch all of the action but Joel Tushnet ran into Marc-Etienne McLaughlin's set of kings and was eliminated just before play ended for the night.
On Sunday afternoon, 268 players returned to their seats in the Orange section of the vast Amazon Room, each hoping to make it into the top 243 finishing places so they would have some prize money to show for their efforts.
Once those fortunate few had reached the money, their goal changed to navigating their way through to Monday’s Day 3 and towards that huge $582,231 first place prize, the coveted World Series of Poker bracelet and a lifetime of bragging rights that come with being a WSOP champion
Over the course of 10 hour-long levels, the 243 players were reduced to a much more manageable field of 17 and these 17 hopefuls know they are only 16 eliminations away from being written into poker’s history books.
Leading those 17 players back into battle at 1:00 p.m. on Monday afternoon is David Jackson who bagged up a tournament leading stack of 1,487,000 by the time the tournament director called time on proceedings.
Also safely through and ready to make a beeline for the final table are players such as Michael Ferrer (1,146,000), Aaron Massey (949,000), former November Nine member Marc-Etienne McLaughlin (795,000) and Timothy West (633,000).
Of course, the very nature of tournament poker meant that a large number of established pros, familiar faces and “big names” fell by the wayside throughout Day 2. Reaching the money, but failing to punch their ticket for Day 3, were players such as John Eames, Alex Kravchenko, Matt Salsberg, Ryan Spittles, Steve Gross, Manig Loeser, Steve Gee, Eric Baldwin, Steve Sung, Todd Terry, Andrea Dato, Barny Boatman and Brandon Cantu.
Play in Event #55 resumes at 1:00p.m. and continues until only one man has each and every one of the 10,782,000 chips in play. Who will the champion be? Return to PokerNews.com on Monday to find out!