Blair Oconnell started the day with just one 5k chip, or half a big blind, after squeezing his way into the money late last night. However, as the saying goes, a chip and a chair is sometimes all you need.
After winning several all-ins, Oconnell had 100,000 in front of him and was still in contention for the title. Oconnell pointed at his cap and credited media personality Donnie Peters for the support.
Welcome back to the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas for Day 2 of the $600 PokerNews Deepstack Championship, where cards will be back in the air at 11 a.m. local time. Yesterday, a bumper field of 5,110 hopefuls showed up to create one of the biggest fields of the summer. Out of those 5,110 entrants, 767 found a bag, all of whom secured a cash of at least $1,201 out of the total prize pool of $2,606,100.
On Day 2, the field will be again decimated as we inch closer to the first-place prize of $282,876 and the gold that awaits the last person standing in this event. It's not just the glimmering gold from the coveted bracelet shining on the horizon. Being a PokerNews sponsored event, the winner will receive a unique, commemorative 24k-karat gold coin as an additional reward.
PokerNews Gold Coin
Start of Day 2 Top Ten Chip Counts
Rank
Player
Country
Chips
Big Blinds
1
Hideki Sahashi
Japan
1,174,000
117
2
Martin Kabrhel
Czech Republic
1,049,000
105
3
Jun Li
China
882,000
88
4
Diogo Cardoso
Portugal
825,000
83
5
Sihao Zhang
Luxembourg
797,000
80
6
Michel Molenaar
Netherlands
724,000
72
7
Isaac Daniels
United States
720,800
72
8
Nan Min
United States
715,000
72
9
Robert Carswell
United States
692,000
69
10
Norman Michalek
United States
680,000
68
Notorious motor-mouth Martin Kabrhel (1,049,000) is among the top stacks going into Day 2 and will no doubt be one to watch as the tournament rolls along. He will be joined by a slew of notables, including PokerNews Deepstack Challenge qualifiers Raymond Chiu (326,000), Michael Beattie (644,000), and various other WSOP Daily Deepstacks leaderboard winners.
Michael Beattie
Chiu especially stands out as he dominated the first week of the challenge with back-to-back wins in the Daily Deepstack earlier during the series to win his seat to this event.
As always, PokerNews will be on the floor, covering the action wire-to-wire. Stay glued to your screen as the 2024 World Series of Poker rolls along.