Ben Hoy Leads After Action-Packed Day 2 of Event #49: $3,000 Freezeout No-Limit Hold'em
Day 2 of Event #49: $3,000 Freezeout No-Limit Hold’em of the 2024 World Series of Poker at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas began with 188 players and ended with only 13 after a long day of intense action between some of the best players in the game. Those remaining players advance to Day 3, which starts Friday at noon, where they will take their shot at what remains of the $3,342,840 prize pool, including a $523,195 grand prize.
Ending Day 2 with the best shot at that top prize was Ben Hoy, who bagged up the chip lead with 7,300,000. Hoy caught fire late in the day as he started to take every chip within his grasp after the final break. At one point he had close to 11 million, but dropped a few hands in the final level to sink back down closer to the pack.
Right behind him in second is Joseph Carden (6,300,000), who likewise had a strong end to the day to land himself near the top of the leaderboard.
End of Day 2 Top Ten Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ben Hoy | United States | 7,300,000 | 61 |
| 2 | Joseph Carden | United States | 6,300,000 | 53 |
| 3 | Erlend Melsom | Norway | 4,980,000 | 42 |
| 4 | Nikolay Yosifov | Bulgaria | 4,635,000 | 39 |
| 5 | Uri Reichenstein | Israel | 4,480,000 | 37 |
| 6 | David Stamm | United States | 4,300,000 | 36 |
| 7 | Maxx Coleman | United States | 4,105,000 | 34 |
| 8 | Ivan Ruban | Russia | 3,445,000 | 29 |
| 9 | Clemen Deng | United States | 3,260,000 | 27 |
| 10 | Morgan Petro | United States | 2,560,000 | 21 |
After the top two stacks, there is a jumble of stacks, all within just 500,000 chips of each other, fighting for the third-highest stack. Erlend Melsom just pipped that distinction with 4,980,000, edging out Nikolay Yosifov Uri Reichenstein , David Stamm and Maxx Coleman.
During the day's action, some of the notables who fell by the wayside include Martin Zamani (126th), Ben Keeline (45th), Punnat Punsri (36th) and Sami Bechahed (29th).
The day finally came to a close after 12 hours and the final elimination of the night ended up being David Kaufmann, who went out in 14th place.
Action will resume on June 21 at 12 p.m. in Level 28 with blinds at 60,000/120,000 with a 120,000 big blind ante.
PokerNews will be there to provide all of the updates once again.