Nearly two thousand players lost their chance to win a bracelet in the Event #34: $1,000 Double Stack No-Limit Hold'em today as Day 2 saw the giant field plummet to the last 359 runners.
With 6,214 entries to the tournament, the remaining players can already call their progress a deep run. The payouts are yet to hit the sharp incline of the latter stages, but there's $687,782 waiting at the top, and that's a strong motivation for everyone involved.
Those include poker legend Ari Engel who had a great day at the office, sitting on Daniel Negreanu's left for a significant portion of today's 10-level span. Notoriously known for his relentless grind on the live scene, the nine-time WSOP Circuit champ was able to spin his stack to 1,683,000. Engel didn't finish as a chip leader but he's right there with the other big stacks.
The player who was eventually able to separate herself from the rest of the field was Arianna Son who had already crushed on Day 1. Son is now an outright chip leader, having bagged 2,363,000. She's trailed by the likes of Radoslav Stoyanov (2,000,000), Ignacio Molina (1,997,000), and Enrico Rudelitz (1,855,000), among others.
Molina's story is particularly appealing as the Spanish player came to WSOP with a bunch of plastic ducks—his favorite hand is a pair of deuces—, prepared to award every player who'd eliminate him from the tournaments he enters. So far, Molina doesn't seem to be close to another giveaway as he's currently sitting in the top 10.
Day 3 will also feature Steven van Zadelhoff who has already impressed with an 11th place in the Millionaire Maker. Van Zadelhoff knows how it feels to navigate through large player pools and with 1,300,000 in his bag, the Dutchman is certainly one of the hottest candidates for the title.
Play resumes on Monday, June 17, at 12 p.m. local time, when it will be time to find out whether Engel, Son, and van Zadelhoff keep crushing or if Day 3 propels other players towards the gold WSOP bracelet. Blinds will return to 10,000/20,000 with a big blind ante of 20,000 and the PokerNews live reporting team will be there throughout.
flop. 
and then he started to stack his new chips.
. He saw good news that he was flipping against 
and the 
runout favored Engel who improved to 1.45 million.
. He called 48,000 on the flop, then 140,000 on the turn, and finally a 351,000-shove on the river. 
and van Zadelhoff is now among the tournament chip leaders.
. He got check-raised by a player in the big blind who made it 89,000. Baker declared he was all in and a call followed right away. 
against 
and he avoided a nasty two-outer on the 
, had her opponent almost drawing dead. The turn was the 
changed nothing and Bounahra doubled up.
turn. Pham raised to 75,000 and he received a call.
for a turned set and took down the giant pot.
