The final Day Two is in the books at the 2016 World Series of Poker Championship Event and, although he would emerge with the day’s largest stack, Day 2C chip leader Gustavo Lopes wasn’t able to catch the man who is the overall chip leader, Valentin Vornicu.
A massive throng of 3252 players – larger than most tournament’s starting field – came back for play on Day 2C with Timothy Sheehan atop the leaderboard. The plan was, like their Day 1A/1B brethren, to play five and a half levels on Wednesday and try to get the numbers down to a manageable number for the segregated field to combine on Thursday. The day’s roster of players seemed like it was an invitational for former champions of this event as players such as Phil Hellmuth, Ryan Reiss, Martin Jacobson, Scotty Nguyen, Greg Merson, Joe Hachem and defending champion Joe McKeehen were all a part of the mix.
While Reiss and former fellow World Champion Chris Moneymaker started off the day on the upswing, the story wasn’t the same for other notable names. Felipe Ramos, Allen Cunningham, Vanessa Rousso, Marvin Rettenmaier and Donny Mizrachi (otherwise known as “the Mizrachi brother without a WSOP bracelet”) all would find their way to the rail in the first couple hours of the day’s action. Sheehan himself had his issues, albeit not of his own doing.
Sheehan would find Aces in his pocket and was able to get not one but two opponents to commit their stacks to the center against him. Sheehan had to feel confident with the rockets as one opponent held pocket Kings and the other pocket nines to do battle. Unfortunately for Sheehan, a King on the flop changed everything; once an Ace didn’t come to the rescue on the turn or river, Sheehan would ship some of his stack away and fall out of the chip lead.
As the early evening came around, Lopes would make his move towards the top of the leaderboard. Jacobson was the victim of Lopes as, on a 9-8-7-6-6 board, the duo would get their chips into the center of the felt. Jacobson might have thought he was still good with his 9-8 for a flopped two pair, but with plenty of draws available it might have been a bit of a push. In this instance, Lopes had the goods against him, turning up pocket sevens to show he was never behind and actually caught the unnecessary boat to knock Jacobson out of the tournament.
Sitting with 480K in chips after the knockout of Jacobson, Lopes was able to cruise through the remainder of the Day 2C action. He was able to cut a big chunk of chips from Jeremy Menard on an A-8-2-K-5 board, betting 100K on the river that Menard couldn’t find a way to call for his last 33K in chips. That hand pushed him to 581K and, by the end of the night, Lopes was sitting on a very healthy 630,700 and joined by the Top Five from Day 2C on the overall leaderboard.
1. Valentin Vornicu, 838,000
2. Gustavo Lopes, 630,000*
3. Raffaele Castro, 587,000*
4. Jamie Shaevel, 586,000
5. Alvaro Lopez, 573,000
6. Rafael Moraes, 571,000*
7. Albert Daher, 570,000*
8. Ramin Hajiyev, 558,000
9. Michael Mizrachi, 549,000*
10. Chad Power, 546,000
(* – Day 2C players)
For the first time during the running of the 2016 WSOP Championship Event, the entirety of the field will come together beginning at 11AM on Thursday. Unofficially 2176 players will be a part of the Day 3 proceedings, but there’s a good deal of work left to do for those still involved in the tournament. The $63 million-plus prize pool is set to be divided amongst the final 1011 players, meaning that there’s the potential that the money bubble will pop late this evening and, if not tonight, definitely during Friday’s action. While that $15,000 min-cash might be nice to some, everyone is still looking for the WSOP World Champion’s bracelet and the $8 million payday that will go along with it this November.
