La Sengphet is our first player to breach the 100,000 chips mark. When we arrived at the hand that did it, she had just called a Alexia Portal's all in bet for about 12,000. A player acting behind Sengphet also made the call.
The flop came and Sengphet fired a bet into the pot. The other player involved mucked.
Sengphet:
Portal:
Sengphet's hand remained good through the on the turn as well as the on the river. The hand has put Sengphet comfortably into the chip lead.
Shannon Elizabeth has just been eliminated from the tournament by Svetlana Gromenkova. Under the gun, Gromenkova raised and the short-stacked Elizabeth shoved from the button. The blinds folded and Gromenkova called with , leading Elizabeth's .
The board ran out {x} and Elizabeth was sent to the rail.
Gromenkova is hovering around the 90,000 chip mark.
There are ten minutes left in the level and the floor staff has announced that each table will play six more hands and then the players will bag up their chips.
We saw 1,054 women hit the felt today. It was six fewer than we had last year, but it was an excited and fun bunch. When the clock finally stopped after ten levels of play we were down to just 138 of our original group.
A number of today's participants are well known inside poker and elsewhere. Vanessa Selbst, Vanessa Rousso, Lauren Kling, Erica Schoenberg, Jennifer Tilly, Leo Margets, Veronica Dabul, JJ Liu, Nichoel Peppe, Amanda Thomas, Kristy Arnett, Lynn Gilmartin, Elaine Chaivarlis, Fatima de Melo, Kathy Liebert, Thuy Doan, Tiffany Michelle, Maridu Mayrinck, Cheryl Hines and Shannon Elizabeth all showed up, but none of them would live to see day two.
La Sengphet took the chip lead after about eight levels of play and held onto it through the rest of the night, finishing with 148,500. However, she has her work cut out for her as 2008 champ Svetlana Gromenkova (70,100), Evelyn Ng (55,200), Liv Boeree (57,700), Jessica Welman (24,500) and Lacey Jones (17,500) are also in the hunt.
It's a tough field, and they're all going to be gunning for the top prize of $192,232
Make sure to check out PokerNews tomorrow at 2:30 pm local time to catch all the live coverage of Day 2 action including rivered flushes, turned straights and flopped sets!