With the elimination of Christopher DeMaci in 11th place, play has been suspended for the night. The player who bagged the most chips for tomorrow's final table is Steve O'Dwyer. He'll be in the pole position with 644,000.
It was a long day in the Caesars Palace tournament room. Players originally expected that this would be a four-day tournament but were told upon arriving today for Day 2 that one day had been trimmed from the schedule. The 66 Day 2 starters would need to play all the way down to a final table of 10.
Andrew Lichtenberger got a big boost in the middle of the day by taking out Layne Flack, who had been absolutely crushing his opposition to that point in the tournament. Lichtenberger flopped sixes full of jacks against Flack's three jacks, a hand that Flack ulimately couldn't get away from.
Dan Casetta, the Day 1 chip leader, also had a good day, continuing to chip up throughout the day without ever being in any serious trouble.
When play resumes at 2pm tomorrow, the players will be in the following seats:
Seat 1: Matt Stout (270,000)
Seat 2: Diego Sanchez (472,000)
Seat 3: Andrew Lichtenberger (348,000)
Seat 4: Aaron Been (198,000)
Seat 5: Thu Nguyen (157,000)
Seat 6: James Carroll (575,000)
Seat 7: Steve O'Dwyer (644,000)
Seat 8: Brock Parker (465,000)
Seat 9: Anthony Yeh (101,000)
Seat 10: Dan Casetta (489,000)
Join us then for what should prove to be an exciting conclusion to this championship event.
Christopher DeMaci was running bad for most of the second half of the day. No surprise then that he got his chips all in with by far the best of it and came up short. DeMaci and Matt Stout went to war pre-flop. DeMaci wound up all in with against Stout's . The flop came queen-high, . DeMaci was left with a few different cards to hit, but the board bricked and to send hm to the payout table one place shy off the final table.
Short-stacked Steven Burkholder ran into some bad timing. He was dealt pocket nines, a hand he couldn't afford not to play, at the same time that Steve O'Dwyer was dealt pocket tens. All of Burkholder's chips got into the middle pre-flop. After the river of a board, they went into O'Dwyer's stack and Burkholder was headed to the payout table.
Andrew Lichtenberger just spent five minutes tanking on the river against stev O'Dwyer, by far the longest tank we've seen to this point in the tournament. Lichtenberger started by limping his small blind pre-flop. O'Dwyer raised to 21,000 and Lichtenberger called.
Lichtenberger then took a very passive line on every street, check-calling 33,000 on the flop, check-calling another 72,000 on the turn and then checking the river. There, with a board of , O'Dwyer moved all in. Lichtenberger was in the tank a solid five minutes before finally folding his hand.
"It would be very +EV if you showed a bluff right now," Andrew Been said to O'Dwyer as O'Dwyer collected the pot.
"It *would* be," agreed Lichtenberger. "I'd be out in ten minutes." O'Dwyer didn't respond.
PokerNews presenter Lynn Gilmartin chatted with "LuckyChewy" earlier today. Check it out:
Some of the players have been discussing the structure of the tournament and how silly they believe it is. This happened a lot after the last jumped went from 500/2,000/4,000 to 500/3,000/6,000. The players seem as if the tournament has skipped some key levels and should be reevaluated for the future.
Steve O'Dwyer had this to say on his latest Tweet about the structure:
"this mtt has the silliest structure ever, @AllenKessler would not approve, and neither do I. I have 410k at 3k-6k 500. 15 left."
Whether or not Kessler would approve doesn't matter here as we trek onward into the night in pursuit of a final table.
Brock Parker raised from middle position to 16,000 and action folded around to Jeff Roper in the big blind. He reraised all in and Parker quickly called, tabling two kings. Roper held an underpair with sixes.
The board ran out and that was the end of the line for Roper. He finished in 13th place and earned himself $14,350. Roper took down the title in the WSOP Circuit Main Event that was held in St. Louis, Missouri a couple weeks ago for over $170,000. Not a bad back-to-back run.