Day 2b done and dusted

July 13, 2011, Posted by Pokerfarm

With day 2b now out of the way, things are starting to get serious in the main event. Tomorrow the remaining 1866 players will have a rest day. They'll resume Thursday when the impossible will start to become distinctly real and we'll have an idea of who's poised to run deep in this year's championship event.

Yesterday's flight saw the bulk of our remaining Pokerfarm players return to the tables. It was a mixed day of fortune for our boys with no-one really going on a tear up the chip counts. We lost some of the big names including James Bord, Jeff Lisandro and Matt Perrins, however there was some good news with our South African contingent Darren Kramer and Stan Topol making it through with 79,100 and 68,000 chips respectively. 

Story of the day was Pokerfarm's crowd favourite Jean Robert Bellande, who bagged up an impressive 125,600 at the close after a really tough day 2 table. Superstars Sam Trickett and Jake Cody also made it through, grinding hard all day to finish up on  83,500 and 60,200 chips respectively. Never write off these boys, there's a long way to go in this!

Pokerfarm's day 1 chip leader John Hewitt had a tougher time today but still got through with a stack of 60,300. He joins Greg Ronaldson (90,200) and Wes Pantling (220,000) along with the rest of the team on day three.

So in total we still have 8 players left fighting in the main event and a pretty decent sweat to come it seems...

As for other notables, POY contender Ben Lamb had another ridiculous day. You really have to question whether lamb is human; his WSOP just got even better as he steamrollered his table to go into day 3 as official chip leader of the main event with a staggering 551,600 in chips. Kevin 'Belowabove' Saul had a great day to end just trailing Lamb on 542,200. The top Brit out of a remaining 72 going into day 3 is Yorkshireman Ash 'Ashthedonkey' Mason who sits in 23rd spot with 325,900 chips.

With blinds returning at 800-1600/200 there's still a huge amount of play left in this, so the early leaders won't be getting carried away. Never before has a day 2 chip leader won the main event, and while stats are there to be broken, the guys near the bottom and the middle of the pack won't be losing any sleep. We'll be back for more from the Rio come day 3 as the pressure starts to mount and we get one step closer to the cash.

Our daily Poolside show episode 5 is now up - Tonight we quizzed the intelligence of several poker players and there's more Kara-oke from the lovely Ms Scott. Enjoy.