Yesterday we saw the simultaneous running of both Day 2a and 2b from the WSOP Main Event, each played in separate rooms, run as separate tournaments with 2a comprising of the 657 players from Day 1a and the 1,387 players from Day 1b making the field for 2b. The combined fields of 2,044 played down to 842 yesterday with Gaelle Baumann showing the men how it's done as she is currently the only player to eclipse the 1/2 million chip mark, finishing the day on 505.8k chips.
While Baumann can look forward to day 3 confident she'll be at the very least one of the biggest stacks in the field (if not the biggest, depending on how day 2c goes today) one man who probably thought he would be back for more has already "left the building" as the big chip leader from the three Day 1's, William John, was eliminated at the hands of the man who finished the day just behind Baumann, Mark Demirdjian. Demirdjian had already taken a big pot from John before the overnight chip leader was sent to rail as his AcKc fell to Demirdjian's flopped set of 10's. At this point Demirdjian took the chip lead and with 499.9k chips at the end of the day he is only 5k off that position right now.
Hot on the heels of the two aforementioned chip leaders we see a man in form in the rotund shape of Shaun Deeb with 461k chips. Deeb has already had a stellar year, taking down 4 SCOOP events, final tabling the $10k PLHE event a couple of weeks ago and then taking a cool $1 million last week, after making his way through a star studed field in the $25k satellite for the $1 million seat into the "Big One for One Drop" event (he agreed with Gus Hansen that he would take the cash and Hansen could take the one seat on offer when play reached heads up). Deeb has a magnificent level 9 where he more than doubled his stack - he will certainly hope a deep run here will erase memories of the totally sick fate he suffered in this event last year when his AA lost to A6 all in pre flop in a +400k pot when his opponent hit trip sixes on the river.
Other big names making it through to Thursdays Day 3 with at least double the average chip count include; Vanessa Selbst (350k) , Jason Sommerville (333k), Eugene Katchalov (331k), Ronny "1-ronnyr3" Kaiser (320k) and Daniel Negreanu (277k). A whole host of other big names will also come back Thursday, perhaps not with the biggest stacks but with all to play for and they include; Maria Ho, Brian "$tinger 88" Hastings, Jackie Glazier, Sammy Farha, Faraz Jaka, Liv Boeree, Ben "Ben86" Tollerene and a splattering of former Main Event champs in Peter Eastgate, Jerry Yang, Huck Seek, Pius Heinz, Dan Harrington and Robert Varkonyi.
Big names to bust on on Day 2 include; Isaac "philivey2694" Haxton, Brian "tsarrast" Rast, Jeff Lisandro, Justin "ZeeJustin" Bonomo, Erik Seidel, Allen Cunningham, Mike Matusow, Matt Hawrilenko, Barry Schulman and Layne Flack.
With Day 2c already underway it will only be a few more hours until we know the final tally of players returning for Day 3, the first day all competitors will play at the same time and among the same field. Already in Day 2c we have seen Phil Ivey bust out as his chip stack fell below the 8k mark before he committed his chips preflop with 22 only to be outdrawn by an opponents A 10. Ivey still leads the POY race however, although that title will not be decided until at least the WSOPE later in the year. In total 2,300 players are playing in Day 2c (more than in Days 2a & b combined) so there will be a lot of big names dropping and doubtlessly progressing on to Thursday's next round.
Find more of the latest news and articles relating to the World Series of Poker in the 2012 WSOP-section.