Yesterday saw Event 2, $1500 NLHE reach the final 15 players from the starting 2,101. We also saw two more events get underway as Event 3, $3000 Heads up No Limit Hold Em/Pot Limit Omaha (the first time we've seen this event at the series) and Event 4, $1500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low 8 or Better.
One player who won't be returning tomorrow as Event 2 reaches it's final stages is Phil Hellmuth, who despite a great first few levels - catapulting him up towards the top of the leaderboard - eventually succumbed in 61st place, getting his final few chips in with AJ only to find himself up against JJ. Nevertheless, as 216 players cashed Hellmuth's impressive 61st place was good for $7,204 and also good for Hellmuth's 86th WSOP cash, extending his lead for that particular WSOP record. It looks like that his record will stay at 86 cashes for the time being as Hellmuth swiftly entered and exited Event 4 and despite tweeting " Could be best event of WSOP...Seems like players are lost in this game" fell after just a couple of hours later.
Other big names falling in Event 2 today include John Juanda (who fell in the last level of the day - hitting two pair with A9 on the flop only to be outdrawn by Neil Willerson's AQ on the turn), Jason Mercier, Layne Flack, Eli Elezra, Brandon Cantu, Kyle Julius and Paul Wasicka.
Event 3 brought saw a lot of big names among the 317 entrants in the first ever HU PLO/NLHE mix event. They played down to 64 players today with big names still in play including Annette Obrestad (the only woman to make it this far), Justin Bonomo, David Chiu, Justin "BoostedJ" Smith, Josh Arieh, Mike Sexton, David Williams, Yevgeney "JovialGent" Timoshenko and David "raptor17" Benefield. There were even more big names who didn't make day 2 however as Phil Ivey made his second day 1 bust in a row (he has now moved on to Event 4) along with last years POY Ben Lamb, multiple bracelet winner Jeff Lissandro, the recent SCOOP player of the series Shaun Deeb, recent WPT High Roller champ Tom "Kingsofcards" Marchese, Daniel "KidPoker" Negreanu and triple crown winner Jake Cody (to name but a few).
All remaining players are guaranteed a min cash of $3,395 and will be back tomorrow to play down to the final 8.
The final event to start yesterday was the $1500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low 8 or Better which attracted a field of 622 players and was once again jam packed with world class talent. As we've already heard. Phil Hellmuth made a swift exit from event 4 - Phil Ivey however is still in the mix and has increased his starting stack from 4,500 to 10,400 over the course of 8 levels of play although this is still below the average chip stack of over 13k. Others were not so lucky as Daniel Negreanu, Carlos Mortensen, Jason Mercier, Layne Flack, and Eli Elezra all busted from their second event of the day and a whole host of famous faces went to the rail with them including David Benyamine, Erik Seidel, Barry Schulman, Allen Cunningham, Men Nguyen, Cyndy Violette and Eugene Katchalov.
Big names at the top end of the leader board include recent WPT World Chamionship 3rd place finisher Michael Mizrachi currently in 2nd place with 41.5k chips, Jeff Madsen in 8th with 31k and Jon "PearlJammer" Turner in 11th with 28.1k. The current chip leader is William Carroll who holds 49.1k in chips.
Play re-starts later today with blinds at 500/1000 with a 100 ante and with 210 from the starting 622 players chasing WSOP glory and a winners cheque in excess of $200,000.
Find more of the latest news and articles relating to the World Series of Poker in the 2012 WSOP-section.