Bob Bounahra bagged 1,058,000 to lead the 16 remaining runners at the end of Day 2 of Event #21: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em. Bounahra, notably, was a member of the November Nine in 2011, the final table eventually won by Pius Heinz. That $1.3 million cash for seventh place is his lone six-figure score, but he'll be shooting for number two tomorrow.
Trailing Bounahra is Thayer Rasmussen, best known by his online handle "THAY3R," under which he has had plenty of success online. Rasmussen ended the night in second with 933,000, good for a wide gap over third-place Dominik Nitsche (707,000). Rasmussen collected a huge pot near the end of the night when he turned two pair against Louis Campbell.
The field of a $1,000 buy-in at the WSOP is typically chock full of lesser experienced players, however plenty of steely veterans navigated the minefield and find themselves among the final 16. Jeff Gross, Mickey "mement_mori" Petersen, Nitsche, Bounahra and Dan Alspach all have north of $1 million in live cashes alone, with plenty more online.
Some big names also fell along the way: JC Tran, Erik Seidel, Jason Koon, James Mackey, David Williams, Mukul Pahuja, and Jason Senti all collected some money but no glory as they fell by the wayside during the 10 level grind today.
Day 3 begins tomorrow at 1 p.m. local time, and we'll be on the watch as the field is whittled down to a winner who will collect more than $300,000 and a gold bracelet. Be sure to tune in to the action right here on PokerNews.
Thayer Rasmussen just moved into the chip lead here and is close to cresting the one-million chip mark.
He called a 75k bet on an flop then somehow managed to get Louis Campbell to shove in on him on the turn. Rasmussen called, having turned into two pair.
Campbell had and a lot less chips after the river was revealed.
Chandra Winardi got all in with preflop against the of Bob Bounahra. Winardi made a flush, but Bounahra flopped a set and made nines full to bust his unfortunate opponent.
Louis Campbell just took a huge chunk of Dan Alspach's stack with on a board of . We believe most of the money went in on the river, and Alspach held for top two on the flop.
Richard Liotta must have thought he'd struck gold when Zachary Gruneberg shipped it in ahead of him and he woke up with in the big blind.
Gruneberg could only lay on the felt, but picked up a gutterball on the flop. Sure enough, the turn made him Broadway and after the river, Gruneberg had cracked Liotta's aces to send him home 20th.
Jonathan Neckar got outflopped by Jeff Gross in a massive pot moments ago.
We picked up the hand with Gross shoving 190,000 over a 27,000 bet from Neckar on a flop. Neckar made the call with , Gross had and after a run out, Neckar was down to just 35k.
He raised the next hand to 27,000 and got two callers. The rest went in with on a flop against Louis Campbell holding .