Day 2 of the partypoker LIVE MILLIONS North America CA$10,300 Main Event has concluded with the 521-player field reduced to 66 players.
Kevin Rabichow is the overall chip leader courtesy of a late elimination of Norson Shiniti Saho. On his heels include Armin Rezaei, Dietrich Fast, Santiago Plante, and Maurice Hawkins.
Day 3 will kick off on Friday, May 24, at 12 p.m. (EDT) with the tournament on the money bubble as only 63 players will finish in-the-money.
A full recap of the day, along with a full list of chip counts will be posted later tonight.
It was an action-packed Day 2 at the 2019 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS North America CA$10,000 Main Event that saw the field dwindle from 258 players down to just 67. Another 10 levels were completed and bagging up the largest stack of them all was Kevin Rabichow with 30,105,000 chips.
Rabichow, who hails from Chicago, IL, hasn't played much live poker in the past couple of years but it seems that the time off hasn't hurt his play. He has over $80,000 in career tournament winnings and a deep run in this event could see that number increase exponentially.
A large portion of Rabichow's chips came from a late elimination of Norson Shiniti Saho. Rabichow called a four-bet shove of over five million from Saho and had him crushed with pocket jacks against Saho's nines. Rabichow will enter Day 3 with over a nine million chip lead and have the perfect opportunity to pick up more chips as the money bubble approaches.
Some other top stacks include Armin Rezaei who was the only other player to bag up over 20 million chips. Rezaei threw 2,103,000 in his bag and will sit in second place for the second day in a row. Montreal native Francois Billard sits in third place with 19,795,000 followed closely by notables Dietrich Fast (18,895,000) and Maurice Hawkins (18,810,000).
Armin Rezaei
Coming into the day, there were 258 hopefuls looking to battle their way through another 10 levels. Unfortunately, many of them were sent to the rail leaving just 67 players. With just 63 earning a spot in the money, the action seemed to slow quite a bit as the day drew to a close. In the last level of the night, the 30-second shot clock was introduced and that will carry forward until the end of the tournament.
There were quite a few partypoker team members that were looking to make deep runs. All but one of them were eliminated from the competition with only Joni Jouhkimainen still remaining. Jouhkimainen finished the day with 8,725,000 which came in large part due to a big double up with pocket kings. Some partypoker members to fall throughout the day include Mike Sexton, Kristen Bicknell, Ludovic Geilich, and Anatoly Filatov.
Entering Day 2, former Playground Poker Club dealer Sandy Lam held the chip lead. She had an up and down day that saw her stack diminish within the first couple of levels. She managed to battler her way back to a top-ten stack but then faltered late to finish with 6,030,000. Another interesting name to keep an eye out for is Mike McDonald. The poker phenom from a few years back has taken a hiatus on the felt to develop his own business but is showing no signs of any rust. McDonald spent the latter part of the day on the feature table and wound up with a stack of 10,995,000.
Mike McDonald
The action will resume at 12 p.m. local time tomorrow with just four eliminations needed to reach the money. A min-cash will be worth CA$20,000 so it is expected that many players will tighten up until the bubble bursts. The blinds will start off at 80,000/160,000 with a 160,000 big blind ante and the levels will be increased to 75 minutes for Day 3.
Continue to follow along with the PokerNews live reporting team for all of the live updates throughout the entire event.
