Andy Bloch Leads the Remaining 62; Rast Still in the Running to Defend His Title

After a very slow first day of play in which only one player busted out, the action heated up on Day 2. After 500 more minutes of tournament poker we are down to 62 players, all of whom are gunning for that $1,451,527 first-place prize. Tomorrow we will make serious progress towards the money, with Andy Bloch as our chip leader with 687,000.

The first player that got eliminated was Justin Bonomo who started the day very low on chips. Towards the end of the first level we also lost Lee Goldman when he ran into Antony Lellouche's nuts in 2-7 Triple Draw. Stephen Mack busted out to John D'Agostino and slowly but surely we started losing more players in the second level.

Lellouche did not only crush Goldman's dreams, but he also took a big pot off David 'Bakes' Baker. Baker was left behind with little chips and busted shortly thereafter. It also wasn't Shawn Buchanan nor Scott Seiver's day today as both players didn't make it to the second break.

George Lind and Bertrand Grospellier also didn't have great days, as they both were eliminated rather quickly. The first Japanese bracelet winner, Naoya Kihara, who took down the $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 6-max tournament, also made it to Day 2, but he came up short in Seven Card Stud against Nick Schulman.

One of the biggest pots of the day went down in the third level of the day. Jason Mercier tangled with Dan Shak, and within a couple of seconds we saw a pot worth around 370,000 chips. Shak got it in with an open-ended-straight draw and an overpair against Mercier's top set. The turn gave Mercier a flush draw, killing some of Shak's out. But the river was an off suit nine filling up Shak's straight. Read the entire hand here. Mercier's stack took a big hit, but he grinded himself back up and closed out the day with 253,200 while Shak finished with 464,400.

Cory Zeidman won a WSOP bracelet earlier this summer in the $1,500 Stud-8 tournament, but he won't be the first double bracelet winner this year. He busted out in Razz against Hasan Habib.

After the dinner break we quickly said goodbye to Eugene Katchalov. He came up short in Stud-8. John Juanda is also one of the players who didn't make his way through to Day 3. In No-Limit Hold'em he got his money in with ace-deuce and ran into Joe Cassidy's kings.

Gus Hansen showed up for his first tournament of the World Series of Poker, but that didn't pan out the way he had hoped. Phil Ivey, who was short for most of the day, took out the Dane. Ivey himself recovered well from a rough start and closed out the day with 166,200. Michael Mizrachi and Brian Rast will be the two only previous champions returning on Day 3 as David Bach was eliminated. Mizrachi will return tomorrow with 572,200 and is one of the biggest stacks. Robert Mizrachi, who made the final table when his brother won, also had a great day and he closed out with 500,200 chips. Rast has over twice the starting stack going into Day 3 with 303,900.

During the last of play, Daniel Negreanu and Jonathan Duhamel were eliminated. However, the last half of the level was dominated by the controversy a table #360 which you can read about here and here.

Sixteen players will make the money and here is the breakdown: