Mustapha Kanit Bags Huge on Day 2 of $10,000 High Roller
The action has come to an end after a scheduled 10 levels of play on Day 2 of the $10,000 High Roller at the Baha Mar Resort in the Bahamas. Only 28 players remain as the field approaches the money bubble and Mustapha Kanit has an overwhelming chip lead.
Kanit took advantage of the late registration that was open on Day 2 and joined the field in the early levels today. He slowly built up his chips to an average stack by the time dinner break rolled around and from there, the Frenchman took off. In the last level of the night, Kanit busted Simon Higgins who held the chip lead earlier in the day. By the day's end, Kanit bagged up 21,520,000 which was by far and away the largest stack in the tournament.
Some of the other big stacks heading into the final day of play include partypoker pro Joao Simao, who racked up 14,290,000 chips, good enough for second place. Adrian Mateos entered the day as the chip leader and showed no signs of slowing down, increasing his stack to 13,305,000. There were two other partypoker pros to move on to Day 3 with Roberto Romanello amassing a stack of 11,300,000 and Isaac Haxton with 5,005,000.
The day began with 59 players returning from Day 1 but late registration was open for the first four levels. The $1,000,000 guaranteed prizepool was easily surpassed in the early going. In fact, by the time late registration was closed, that number had nearly doubled with a total of 196 entries.
Many players were forced to fire multiple bullets looking to run up a stack that they would be happy with, but many of those failed. Some of the early eliminations belonged to Martin Jacobson, Darren Elias, Kristen Bicknell, Ryan Riess, Ben Tollerene, Patrik Antonius, and Fedor Holz. For Leon Tsoukernik, he managed to last a little longer but it took him seven entries. Unfortunately for him, he still wasn't able to stick around for very long as Justin Bonomo sent him to the rail.
The eliminations were occurring at a rapid pace for the first couple levels, but the dinner break seemed to bring things to a halt. Just 46 players returned after getting some food, but the average stack was upwards of nearly 80 big blinds. The money bubble was in sight, but nobody was willing to budge to make it a reality. In the last four levels of the night, only 18 players were eliminated leaving the money bubble still in the distance.
When the remaining 28 players return tomorrow, they can look forward to a long grind in order to claim the title. The first obstacle will be to burst the money bubble with 23 places getting paid. A min-cash will be worth $20,000 and then everyone can focus on the first-place prize of $450,000. The action will get underway at 1 p.m. with the blinds at 60,000/120,000 and a 120,000 big blind ante. The levels will continue to be 60-minutes in length and they will be playing down to a winner.
The PokerNews live reporting team will be here to bring you coverage of the event to wrap things up here at the 2018 Caribbean Poker Party.