Day 2 Concludes With Money Bubble Bursting; Mizrachi Leads
After almost exactly ten levels of play, Day 2 of Event #25: $5,000 Omaha Hi-Low 8-or-Better is officially in the books! Play began with 152 of the 241 total entrants returning to the felt. By the end of the day, the final 27 players were reached and the money bubble was popped with Robert Mizrachi leading the field. Mizrachi will be bringing a stack of 339,500 into Day 3.
The day began with an absolutely stacked field of players returning to the felt with dreams of grabbing hold of the title of World Series of Poker champion. With that, it seemed that almost every name to hit the rail was recognizable. In the first few levels of the day the tournament lost the likes of Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Brock Parker, Todd Brunson, Layne Flack, Phil Hellmuth, Hasan Habib, Max Pescatori, and Andy Frankenberger. As the day progressed, players who made the final table of this very event last year such as Elie Doft, Phil Ivey, and Scotty Nguyen fell as well. Ivey was eliminated late in the day after being chopped up by Andy Bloch and Kirill Rabtsov. Last year's champion, Joe Cassidy, also found himself without chips before players bagged up for the end of the day.
The consistency of these players in Omaha Hi-Low 8-or-Better is not to be underestimated, as three more players who final tabled this event in 2012 have cashed and are bringing chips into Day 3. Bart Hanson and Ryan Lenaghan finished in seventh and ninth place respectively in 2012. Mike Matusow scored an eighth place finish last year and is running hot fresh off of winning his fourth WSOP bracelet. Matusow will return to Day 3 with under average stack, but merely needs to navigate through the final three tables in order to secure a fifth bracelet around his wrist.
Dan Kelly has managed to score his seventh cash of the 2013 WSOP by making the money in this event. Kelly was relatively quiet most of the day, but managed to squeak into the money and will be bringing 31,000 into Day 3 play which is good for 26th in chips.
The rest of the field remains stacked as well, with several notable professional players hitting the felt for the final day. Names like Shawn Buchanan (263,500), Brian Hastings (259,000), George Danzer (242,500), Christopher George (162,500), Jonathan Duhamel (133,000), Eric Crain (98,500), Jeff Lisandro (94,500), Maria Ho (87,500), and Huck Seed (43,000) will all return to vie for the gold WSOP bracelet.
The money bubble burst late in the night when James Dempsey moved his short stack all in against Mizrachi. Dempsey, who stone bubbled this event in 2012 was forced to succumb to the exact same fate this year when he failed to improve against Mizrachi.
Play will kick off at 2:00 PM PST on Saturday in the Amazon room. Be sure to stay tuned to PokerNews as we provide you with all of the latest updates from the tournament floor as this event draws to its exciting conclusion!