Rick Hensley peaked at 460,000 on Day 2, and now, 100 minutes into the day, he's out.
After plummeting from the top of the counts in a series of hands, he found himself heads up with Keith Fox on a flop of . Hensley open-shipped for a little more than the pot, and Fox called.
Fox:
Hensley:
Fox's hand held, and Hensley gathered this things before exiting.
Our start-of-day chip leader, Rick Hensley, began today by eliminating an opponent on just the second hand to push all of the way up to 460,000. But he quickly began to bleed chips thereafter, and just now suffered a major hit to his stack as Level 16 comes to a close.
Again we only arrived in time to catch the counting down and redistribution of chips, but it appeared Hensley had gotten involved from early position, then Larry Gurney had woken up with in the blinds.
Subsequently we learned that the chips had gone in on the flop with Hensley holding but for a gutshot straight draw. The turn was the and river the , and Gurney's aces had held.
The hand earned Gurney a more than 340,000-chip pot — likely the biggest pot of the tournament thus far — and good enough to catapult Gurney into first position early on Day 2.
It's a sunny Sunday morning in Cherokee, North Carolina where Day 2 of the World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event will be commencing about an hour from now. A total of 201 players survived out of the 856 entries in this $1,675 buy-in event, with Rick Hensley of Morganton, North Carolina returning to the biggest stack of 401,400 to start today's play.
That stack gives Hensley about five times the average at the moment, with Joe Stark of Lawrenceville, Georgia and George Zinaty of Charlotte, NC the only other players with more than 300,000 after one day of poker.
Next in line in the counts is three-time WSOP ring winner David Nicholson, with Kyle Cartwright, Claudia Crawford, Ken Aldridge, and Greg Raymer among the many returning to sizeable stacks.
That total of 856 entries makes the WSOP-C Harrah's Cherokee Main Event the fourth largest on the WSOP Circuit during the 2012-13 season. It also creates a whopping $1.284 million prize pool, with $250,380 of that reserved for the winner. The first-place finisher also will be earning a spot in the WSOP National Championship in May as well as a seat in the 2013 Main Event in Las Vegas this summer (the latter a special prize here at Harrah's Cherokee).
The top 90 finishers will be cashing, meaning just under half of those left will be making the money. That money bubble will probably be bursting later this afternoon, of which the many short stacks — and in truth, everyone still alive — are well aware.
Join us at noon ET as we continue our coverage here from Harrah's Cherokee at PokerNews.
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. Hensley open-shipped for a little more than the pot, and Fox called.
flop with Hensley holding but 
for a gutshot straight draw. The turn was the 
and river the 
, and Gurney's aces had held.
