Daniel Negreanu Leads Final Seven of Event #41: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship
The second day of Event #41: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship has now come to an end after seven exciting levels of play. The 88 player field had a total of 48 returning for Day 2 and when the dust had settled it was fan favorite Daniel Negreanu leading the final seven with 1,502,000 in chips.
Negreanu came into the second day with just over average and by the time the two table redraw happened he had one of the top stacks. He drew the better of the two tables, having several short-stacks clawing at a chance to make the money and he took complete advantage of it, opening as many pots as possible.
The Canadian continually climbed at his table with the aggressive style against the smaller stacks and when the final table came around he found himself sitting on a million in chips, just one of two players to be there at that point. Just moments into the final table Negreanu pulled in a massive pot against ninth-place finisher Michael Mizrachi with rolled up eights, pushing him into first place on the leaderboard, a place he stayed throughout the remainder of the night.
The original plan for this event was to play four days before crowning a champion, but things have moved quicker than expected and it will now only be three. Tomorrow will be the third and final day of the tournament, with a winner taking home a new WSOP bracelet along with the $245,451 first place prize.
Closest behind Negreanu and the only other player over with a seven-figure stack is David "ODB" Baker. He will be starting the day with 1,040,000 and will be looking for bracelet number two. Baker swung his chip stack around for the better part of the day and seemed to always be involved in every large pot during the latter part of the day. He and Negreanu had played an absurd amount of pots during the final table and it looked at one point like Baker was headed in the wrong direction, but Baker turned it around and will be starting the final day second in chips.
Well-known Frank Kassela will be sitting on a stack of 919,000 to start the day, which is good for third on the leaderboard and well above John Hennigan who will be sitting in the middle of the pack with his 682,000 stack. When nine-handed play started, Kassela had just half a million and quickly went to work, finding a pot against Hennigan and several against Negreanu. The five-time bracelet winner Hennigan went in the opposite direction of Kassela, losing almost every pot he played.
The bubble came quickly on Day 2, happening on level 15 and once there the play slowed down vastly. There was a total of 44 rounds of hand-for-hand play before someone finally dropped and unfortunately for Alan Boston it was him. Boston moved the rest of his chips all in on fourth street with three to a straight flush but failed to improve as David Singer's pair of kings took down the pot and everyone remaining was guaranteed at least a $14,667 for their efforts.
The other three players still in contention include bracelet winner Chris Tryba (542,000), two-time bracelet winner David Singer (388,000) and, coming in as the short stack, Russia's Mikhail Semin (183,000).
Final Table
| Seat | Player | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | David Singer | United States | 388,000 |
| 2 | Daniel Negreanu | Canada | 1,502,000 |
| 3 | David "ODB" Baker | United States | 1,070,000 |
| 4 | Chris Tryba | United States | 542,000 |
| 5 | John Hennigan | United States | 682,000 |
| 6 | Frank Kassela | United States | 919,000 |
| 7 | Mikhail Semin | Russia | 183,000 |
The remaining seven players will be starting on level 18 with the limits at 20,000/40,000 and each level will be 90-minutes in length. A restart time of 2 p.m. is set for the final day and the stream will start approximately an hour after that. The tournament will be playing down until the eventual champion is crowned.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be bringing you all of the action as it unfolds in the final day of this event.