Friday marked Day Two action in two tournaments for the 2012 World Series of Poker, with one tournament down to its heads up fights to determine a champion and the determination of an “unofficial” final table in another by the democratic measure of a player vote.
Event #6 – $5000 “Mixed Max” No Limit Hold’em
112 players came back to the tables on Friday from the original 409 combatants, ready to deal with the second leg of the “Mixed Max” format. After playing on nine handed tables through Day One, the players now settled against the felt in a six-handed battle, guaranteeing that the action would be ramped up as the players worked their way down to the 44 players who would earn a WSOP cash for their resumes.
Joe Tehan was at the helm of the Day Two ship with a host of notable names in pursuit of his position. Marvin Rettenmaier, Raja Kattamuri, Gavin Smith, John Duthie, Will “The Thrill” Failla, 2011 $50K Poker Players’ Champion Brian Rast and Eugene Katchalov were poised to take down Tehan should he falter.
Tehan wasn’t having any of that, however, pushing his stack up in the early action over the 200K mark, while Katchalov attempted to keep pace by breaking 100K himself. That early spurt by Katchalov would be short-lived, however, as he would eventually donate his chips to the stack of Victor Ramdin. Daniel Negreanu, who was trying to build up his short stack before moving over to the final table of Event #5, would make some early strides but be eliminated before the Event #5 final table even got started.
It took slightly more than six hours for the money bubble to be burst when Ronald Lee was eliminated by Aaron Jones in 45th place. Following Lee’s elimination, the pace picked up quite a bit as the players on short stacks were comfortable with their minimum paydays (39th through 44th paid $9503, 33rd through 38th $10,984). Martins Adeniya, Zachary Clark, Olivier Busquet, Jason Somerville, Kattamuri, Failla and Smith were some of the players who took something home from the tournament before its close with 31 players remaining following a last hand double elimination.
For the heads up leg of the “Mixed Max” event today the chip leader, Warwick Mirzikinian, will receive a bye as a result of that double takeout. The remainder of the field will square off against each other by their chip counts (2nd place versus 31st, 3rd place versus 30th, etc.), with some interesting matchups among them. Daniel Buzgon (15) will set up against Dimitar Danchev (18); Nicholas Levi (10) will see two-time WSOP bracelet winner Brock Parker (23) across the felt from him and Ryan Leng (10) has to contend with Tehan (27) in heads up play. Other notable names still alive for the title are John “World” Hennigan, Eric Froehlich, Joseph Cheong, Ramdin and Rettenmaier.
Today’s Day Three action will play out until the final eight players are determined. This version of the Elite Eight will then come back on Sunday to determine a champion, who will take the WSOP bracelet and a $480,564 payday for their efforts.
Event #7 – $1500 Seven Card Stud
110 players walked back into the Amazon Room on Friday from the original 367 contestants with a long day ahead of them. The first task would be to work their way down to the 40 players who would take home the minimum $2685 cash from the tournament, but the bigger task would be to get down as close to the final table as possible. As it turned out, they didn’t make the second goal but came awfully close.
The early action was busy as the short stacks made their “double up or go home” stands, with many of them taking the latter route. Jerrod Ankenman, Vladimir Shchmelev, Max Pescatori and Miguel Proulx were some of the victims of this carnage, while Barry Greenstein took the opposite course. After starting the day with a meager stack, Greenstein made a charge through the Day Two field that would take him to the top of the leaderboard.
The player of the day (if there was such an award at the WSOP) would have to have been 2004 WSOP Championship Event runner up David Williams, however. After falling as low as 30K in chips during the action on Friday, he would right the ship and seemingly not lose a hand for the rest of the day. His elimination of Matt Grapenthien in twelfth place pushed him over the 360K mark, which would carry Williams to the lead as play reached nine handed following Greenstein’s elimination of Fabrice Soulier in tenth place.
Following Soulier’s elimination, the WSOP floor staff offered the option to the remaining nine players to stop for the night (it was past the official 2AM curfew for the WSOP) or for the players to play the remaining thirteen minutes of the level before stopping. As with these decisions, it only takes one vote to nullify any action. The majority wanted to stop but one player, Lee Goldman, wanted to play out the final 13 minutes. The players played out that remaining thirteen minutes with no eliminations, leading the “unofficial” nine handed final table for today’s play.
1. David Williams, 493,500
2. Andy Bloch, 296,500
3. Barry Greenstein, 254,000
4. Stephen Su, 180,000
5. Lee Goldman, 175,500
6. Scott Abrams, 130,000
7. Caroline Hermesh, 61,500
8. Joseph Ranciato, 35,000
9. Hu Vinh, 26,500
One of these players, although they will be in action on the final day of this tournament, will not earn the honor of having an official WSOP final table on their records.
The triumvirate at the top of the table – Williams, Bloch and Greenstein – looks to have the best chances at winning this particular Stud bracelet. A victory for Williams would earn him his second WSOP bracelet, while a championship for Greenstein would make it four bracelets for the Poker Hall of Famer. Perhaps surprisingly, Bloch would earn his first WSOP bracelet if he is able to survive the Stud gauntlet.
