Day 2 of a big live tournament is often the one where many players change their mindset from “let’s survive the day” to “let’s get to work.” Day 1 at the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) Main Event, as was the case for the traditional WSOP in Las Vegas, was split into multiple flights because of the size of the field. Those first day flights are exciting, as players have dreams of the final table, but really, what many of them want is to make it to the next day. Day 2, though, feels different, as it’s the first day when the remaining players are combined and they can both look back at what they did on Day 1 and look ahead to the long road to come.
Leading the field of the WSOP Main Event at the end of Day 2 was Constant Rijkenberg, one of just two players with over 400,000 in chips. With 462,800, he is about 33,000 ahead of last year’s 13th place finisher, Hoyt Corkins. In addition to Corkins, the top ten is full of big names. Jake Cody, a bracelet winner this summer and one of four poker “triple crown” winners (WSOP bracelet, World Poker Tour title, and European Poker Tour win) is in 4th place, Erik Seidel is continuing his amazing run this year, currently sitting in 9th place, and Shawn Buchanan is in 10th place.
Rijkenberg only has five live tournament cashes in his career, but one of them is quite a doozy. In 2009, he took down the European Poker Tour (EPT) San Remo title, scoring almost $2 million in the process. But that wasn’t the end of Rijkenberg’s notoriety for that event. It turns out that Rijkenberg was staked for EPT San Remo, which is something perfectly normal for large buy-in tournaments. Poker players will often seek “backers” who front a portion of the buy-in in exchange for a portion of the winnings. In Rijkenberg’s case, it turned out that he sold anywhere between 130 and 160 percent of his action, meaning that backers gave him more money than he needed for the buy-in. Of course, they didn’t know that, and when Rijkenberg won the whole thing, all hell broke loose once backers started adding up the numbers.
Rijkenberg’s mistake was cashing in the event. Not that it’s a scam that’s pulled off frequently, but when it is, the idea is to bust out without cashing and therefore not have one’s backers expect any sort of payout. It is, in essence, the scam from “The Producers.” Rijkenberg may have actually intended to bust out quickly, as reports of his play were that he was very reckless, but he may have inadvertently run into very big hands.
Play is currently under way in Day 3 at the Main Event as the 115 remaining players try to make the money, which starts when there are just 64 players left.
2011 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event – Day 2 Chip Leaders
1 Constant Rijkenberg – 462,800
2 Hoyt Corkins – 429,900
3 Rifat Palevic – 353,500
4 Jake Cody – 323,200
5 Giuseppe Sammartino – 305,900
6 Tom Bedell – 301,900
7 Andy Moseley – 301,400
8 Hyacinthe Bonnin – 296,000
9 Erik Seidel – 291,900
10 Shawn Buchanan – 291,400
