Day 2 at the WPT Doyle Brunson Classic

On day 2 of the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Classic there were 440 survivors that began the day. The field was split between the casino floor and the poker room at the beginning of play and as is the case when two remaining fields combine, there were some tough tables to start the day:

Table 59:

Seat 2 - Scott Fischman
Seat 3 - David "Devilfish" Ulliot
Seat 4 - Ted Forrest
Seat 7 - Shannon Shorr
Seat 8 - Mark Gregorich
Seat 10 - John Murphy

Table 30:

Seat 3 - T.J. Cloutier
Seat 5 - Jonathan "fatalerror" Aguiar
Seat 6 - Bernard Lee
Seat 7 - John Hennigan
Seat 8 - Erik Seidel

Table 16:

Seat 4 - Brian "snagglepuss" Powell
Seat 5 - Abe Mosseri
Seat 6 - Phil Ivey
Seat 7 - James Van Alstyne
Seat 8 - Antonio Esfandiari

This championship event has attracted one of the most impressive tournament fields in the last couple of months, and even when the stars of the poker world weren't in action on the tournament floor, they quickly found a second home in Bobby's room. During the first break of the day a game of high-stakes Chinese poker broke out between Doyle Brunson, Jennifer Harman, John Hanson, and Patrik Antonius. Even after the break Antonius and Hanson kept the game of high-stakes Chinese poker going, and they were quickly joined by Phil Hellmuth, who had busted out of the tournament early in the second level.

While one Phil suffered, another one prospered throughout day 2 action. Phil Ivey started the day as the chip leader with 223,000. Ivey played his large stack well and finished the day as he began, with the chip lead. Ivey was the first player to flirt with the 400,000 mark on this hand:

Ivey raised to 3,600 and Liz Lieu called from the cutoff. David Redlin reraised to 14,000 from the button and Ivey made it 31,000 to go. Lieu thought for a bit before folding and Redlin pushed all in for a few thousand more. Ivey called and showed down pocket cowboys and Redlin was behind with two ladies in the hole. The board missed both players and Ivey moved up to 386,000.

During the fourth level of play, with 239 players remaining, the final table broke in the Bellagio poker room. For the first time in this large tournament, all of the players were on the same tournament floor. Up to this point all tables had been ten-handed, but now the tables converted to nine-handed action as players busted.

As action for the day began to wind down, Ivey was met at the top of the leader board by another huge presence in the world of poker. Daniel Negreanu played strong and he unwaveringly built his small stack into a monster. Kid Poker approached the 300,000 mark on this hand:

On a flop of KQ9, Negreanu had his opponent covered all-in while he held K3. His opponent showed down AA, but the turn brought the J to give Negreanu a flush. No heart fell on the river and Negreanu ran his stack up to 290,000. Negreanu continued to terrorize table 55, so it was a joyous moment for its inhabitants when Negreanu was forced to redraw for an empty seat at table 61. Negreanu racked up his chips and moved to his new surroundings. Waiting for him at table 61 were Nam Le, Men "The Master" Nguyen, Joseph Capello, and Alex Kravchenko. One player at table 55 jokingly offered to tip the floorman in celebration of Negreanu leaving.

Not all the players were building chip-stack mountains consisting of hundreds of thousands of chips. There were many high-profile eliminations during day 2 action, but none more so than the man the tournament is named to honor. Doyle Brunson busted out of play early in the day, but his presence continued to hover in the room every time the Doyle Brunson Classic was mentioned.

Other eliminations: Hasan Habib, Johnny Chan, Jennifer Harman, Adam Levy, Mike "The Mouth" Matusow, Chad Brown, T.J. Cloutier, Darrell Dicken, Mark Newhouse, Mark Seif, Ted Forrest, Phil Laak, Nick Schulman, 2007 World Champion Jerry Yang, Dewey Tomko, Sean McCabe, and Josh Arieh.

When play ended for the night, the remaining 152 players bagged up their chips and the final totals were tallied. Ivey and Negreanu are at the top of pack with 460,700 and 265,700 respectively. Jonathan Little also survived the day (191,300), and kept his hopes of overtaking David "The Dragon" Pham for the 2007 Card Player Player of the Year title alive. Here is a look at the top ten chip stacks at the end of the day:

Phil Ivey - 460,700
Lee Markholt - 442,500
Paul Kraus - 393,500
James Mordue - 348,000
Nenad Medic - 330,500
Erick Lindgren - 304,600
Mikael Thuritz - 302,800
David "Bakes" Baker - 301,400
Peter Jetten - 295,000
Larry Elliot - 276,000

Day 3 will begin tomorrow at noon and the remaining players will all vie to make the money. The money bubble will pop when the 101st player is eliminated and the excitement will increase as that mark approaches. Catch all the action tomorrow on CardPlayer.com, where you can follow all the action in live updates, chip counts, photos, videos, and pro blogs.

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