2011 WSOP day 2 A
Tuesday July 12, 2011 : Duhamel among the casualties
Monday saw 2,031 survivors of the $10 000 buy-in World Series of Poker main event's Day 1a and Day 1c flights come together to battle through the first flight of Day 2 action in Las Vegas. Many celebrities and international poker aces were among the crowds packed into the various Rio Resort venues when Day 2a action started just after noon Vegas time.
Among those with ambitions for the almost $65 million main event prize pool, and possibly the $8.71 million first prize, were overall chip leader at that stage Fred Berger, who emerged after Day 1a with the top chip count of all four Day 1 flights of 209,500 – a 600 percent increase in his starting stack.
Other notable names taking their seats were Sebastian Ruthenberg, Ted Forrest, Olivier Busquet, JP Kelly, Humberto Brenes, Annette Obrestad, Josh Brikis, actor Jason Alexander, Marsha Wolak, Johnny Chan, Minh Nguyen, Lee Childs, Arnaud Mattern, Daniel Negreanu, Fatima Moreira De Melo, Lex Veldhuis, Jon Turner, Filippo Candio, Vince Van Patten, Neil Channing, Antonin Teisseire, Ville Wahlbeck, Dan Shak, Gavin Smith, Marcel Luske, Gavin Griffin, Scotty Nguyen, Victoria Coren and Vitaly Lunkin…but there were many, many more stellar players.
Notably absent was 11 WSOP bracelet champion Phil Hellmuth, who made the remarkably unprofessional mistake of getting his starting days in the $10 000 buy-in event mixed up, arriving almost two hours late to find that his stack had already been blinded off by 50 percent!
He did, however, get down to business almost immediately, rebuilding some of his depleted stack and staying in the course for the day.
A surprising casualty early Monday evening was 2010 WSOP main event champ Jonathan Duhamel from Canada. He wasn't the only one, as Mark Vos, Daniel Cates, Filippo Candio, Basketball ace Paul Pierce, Wendeen Eoils and Lex Veldhuis all saw their dreams of victory dashed.
By late Monday night barely half the field was still in action, according to unaudited numbers at that point.
The officials called it a day in the early hours of Tuesday morning at level 10, with Aleksandr Mozhnyakov claiming the chip lead on 478,600.
Despite his late start, Hellmuth survived the day and even managed to grind his chip stack to 64,900.
Also surviving were Daniel Negreanu, ex-NFL player Eric Stocz and actor-comedians Jason Alexander (167,000) and Brad Garrett (56,000).
There are still star players in contention with significant chip stacks like Mike Sowers, Guillaume Darcourt, Massimiliano Martinez, Sebastian Ruthenberg, Max Weinberg, Wesley Pantling, Day 1 overall chip leader Fred Berger, Adam Junglen, Fatima Moreira De Melo, Shannon Shorr and Christophe de Meulder.
Tuesday midday Vegas time will see a larger field of 2,490 – the survivors of Days 1b and 1d – assembling to compete in the second Day 2 flight, and the survivors from that will join the remaining Day 2 a players in a combined field going into Day 3 Wednesday.
Official numbers indicate that just 3,481 contestants remained on the books for this event by the close of Day 2a action. Given an overall registration field of 6865 recorded for the main event, that suggests that around 991 players survived Day 2a's action, with 2,490 still set to play in Day 2b.
