The Second Day of Highs, Lows and Chopped Pots
Yesterday saw 170 of the biggest high-profile poker players take to the felt for Event No. 15: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better Championship. Play began at 5:00 p.m. local time in Las Vegas and was completed after eight levels were in the books. When things were all said and done, young gun Marco Johnson stood atop the leaderboard with 121,500 chips.
Johnson will have to watch out today when he returns as not to far behind him are Alexander Dovzhenko with 116,600 chips and Phil Ivey with 109,800 chips. Jennifer Harman and Barry Greenstein can also be found in the top ten of the remaining pack, sitting on 93,500 and 88,700, respectively.
Today's action will surely be much more stress-free than yesterday's thanks for Tom Dwan coming up just short of his first-ever WSOP gold bracelet in Event No. 11. Numerous pros in the field for this event had hefty portions of their bankrolls on the line in bracelets bets with the man referred to as "durrrr" and they were sweating his every move from a few feet away in the Amazon Room. The closer Dwan got to the title, the more beads of sweat dribbled off the foreheads of the top players in the game. When Dwan eventually busted in second place just as things were wrapping up for this event at the end of the night, Daniel Negreanu and Mike Matusow began running around like little girls. Most of the others put aside their poker faces and smiled as brightly as they have in years. On top of that, many of the players were sweating game two of the NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers with large sums of money riding on it.
Although Dwan may have taken the spotlight for the day, you can't overlook this event itself. The numbers in this event grew from last year by six and also eclipsed that of the $10,000 Seven Card Stud Championship that Men "The Master" Nguyen won a couple days ago. Who would've thought that Stud Hi-Low is more popular than straight Stud? First place is worth a whopping $447,442 and the top 16 finishers will receive at least $28,221.
Some of the other notable names part of the returning 107 players are Eli Elezra, Gus Hansen, Alexander Kostritsyn, Scott Clements, David Benyamine and Phil Hellmuth. Defending champion Jeffrey Lisandro also remains, keeping his title-defense hopes alive. He has a little bit under average chips with 40,500.
Play resumes later today at 3:00 p.m. local time here at the home of the 2010 WSOP - the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. There's only four events on the schedule today, but this one is a big one. Stay tuned to PokerNews for all the scoops, chopped pots and seventh-street miracles you can handle! We'll see you in a bit.