We just walked past Adam "Roothlus" Levy to see him stacking up a big pot to move up over 200,000. We asked him what happened, and he gave us the short-and-sweet version:
"Hit a boat. Got paid."
After starting the day with about 110,000 chips, Levy suddenly finds himself with 205,000 and a spot in the top five.
One player was all in for a approximate 25,000-chip main pot while Elliot Smith and James Calderaro were still in action with an 18,000-chip side pot up for grabs on the board. Smith bet 16,000 and Calderaro called.
The river was the and Calderaro was faced with a bet of 24,000 from Smith. After a minute, Calderaro called. Smith tabled the and Calderaro mucked his hand.
When we arrived at the table, Spencer Hudson was all in for 46,500 over a bet of 12,500 from his opponent on the board. Hudson sat and waited motionless for a couple minutes while his opponent tanked, but the player eventually folded and let Hudson take the pot without having to go to showdown. Hudson is now up to 83,000 in chips.
With the action folded around through the button, small blind Lex Veldhuis opened to 2,500, and Byron Kaverman three-bet to 5,800 in the big. Veldhuis had just over 40,000 to shove with, and Kaverman made the quick call with the covering stack and the dominating ace. Veldhuis could only show up , and Kaverman's held to send the Dutchman to the showers early.
The player on the button opened to 2,200 and Kevin MacPhee three-bet to 6,000 from the small blind. After a few moments the button re-raised, leading MacPhee to call all in for another few thousand with . The button tabled and got there as the board ran out to eliminate MacPhee.
Welcome back our coverage of the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure from the larger-than-life Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island.
We began with a total of 1,072 players across the two starting flights, and about half of them have already fallen. Just 544 of them will return today for a pretty short six-level day.
Alexey Repik crushed the Day 1a flight to bring the biggest stack into this Day 2, and the Day 1b big stack Alex Venovski begins in third place overall. Thanks to a monster pot late last night, Chino Rheem finds himself in the top five, and Jonathan Jaffe is right behind him in sixth.
Team PokerStars is still well represented too, and Arnaud Mattern is the big stack of the family. The first half of his Day 1b was monstrous, and he was able to put it in cruise control from then on and bag up about 140,000 chips. Others still in the mix include Luca Pagano, Alex Kravchenko, Victor Ramdin, Barry Greenstein, and our favorite diminutive Italian, Dario Minieri.
We're getting pretty close to our noon starting time, so don't wander off on us. Day 2 is at hand!