Level: 12
Blinds: 600/1,200
Ante: 200
Level: 12
Blinds: 600/1,200
Ante: 200
Player | Chips | Progress |
---|---|---|
John Bovin
|
94,000 | |
Charles Sewell |
60,000
-14,800
|
-14,800 |
Paul Magriel |
57,000
-9,000
|
-9,000 |
M Schroeder
|
41,000
-21,000
|
-21,000 |
William McKinney
|
30,000
-9,100
|
-9,100 |
Susie Isaacs |
29,500
-2,500
|
-2,500 |
|
||
Shirley Williams |
18,000
4,000
|
4,000 |
Hand-for-hand play underway as we are now just one player away from the money,
We walked by Susie Isaacs' table and noticed she had bet 4,000 on a board reading against a lone opponent. Her opponent had been tanking for quite some time and Issacs said, "I'll show you."
"I think you've got a big hand," Isaac's opponent said to her. He then mucked.
Isaacs tabled and scooped the pot.
"Made a bad fold," Isaac's opponent said with a smirk.
So far there have been two hands during hand-for-hand play and no bust-outs yet.
With play now slowed to a crawl as go hand-for-hand to determine the bubble boy, we found one table with three extremely likely candidates. All three players have stacks under 1,500 chips, which means they have barely over one big blind to work with.
One of these players just went all-in on another micro-stack's big blind and the power play worked, to the disgust of the now even shorter stacked player.
With a player on a nearby table about to be forced all-in on the next hand, due to his stack not equaling the impending big blind, Stephen Thacker looked down to see . While big slick is a sight for eyes at almost any other point in a poker tournament, the money bubble is one time you would rather see deuce-seven offsuit.
Thacker decided to take a chance and opened for a raise of 3,000. The action folded around to Gary McDonald and he surprised Thacker by three-betting to 9,000. Rather than muck his cards and live to survive the money bubble, Thacker went for the gusto and shoved all-in for his near average stack.
McDonald insta-called and flipped up the dreaded , giving Thacker little chance of surviving the all-in confrontation. The final board rolled out and Thacker was eliminated in what he thought was 397th place, one away from earning the coveted WSOP cash. Fortunately for him, however, it was determined that a smaller stack somewhere in the Amazon Room had gone broke before Thacker did, and he was officially listed in 396th place, earning $1,823 for his run.
While he stood in shock near his former table, thinking he had been the actual bubble boy, Thacker's fellow seniors began to cheer and celebrate, taking photos of the TV screens which officially branded them as winners in this tournament. Cell phones were whipped out and relatives were called with the good news: the remaining players had survived the largest single-day opening field in poker history and made the money at the world's premiere poker event.
After the player in the hijack went all in for 18,400, Paul Magriel re-raised from the cutoff.
"Double quack quack, 44,000," said Magriel.
The rest of the table got out of the way and Magriel showed . His opponent tabled , but found no help from the board that ran out .
With that pot, Magriel is up to about 67,000.
The players are on a 20-minute break.
Level: 13
Blinds: 800/1,600
Ante: 200
Three players from last year's final table made it to Day 2 in 2011.
Preston Derden, last year's sixth place finisher, recently busted. However, Jack Ward (seventh place) and Eric Stemp (fourth place) are going strong in the early stages of Day 2.
Player | Chips | Progress |
---|---|---|
Eric Stemp |
71,000
53,100
|
53,100 |
Jack Ward |
52,000
16,300
|
16,300 |
Preston Derden | Busted |