World Poker Tour Championship Day 2

With all due respect to the $50,000 World Series of Poker H.O.R.S.E. Championship, Day 2 of the 2008 World Poker Tour Championship featured the most impressive field, pound-for-pound, that an open buy-in no-limit hold’em poker tournament has ever seen. Professional players were stacked six deep at every table in the room, and at times professional players accounted for over two-thirds of the field. There wasn’t a lot of dead money in the room from start to finish, and anyone who survived the day from the original 421 had to feel happy to weather the treacherous waters.

Action was still split into two rooms to accommodate the massive amount of players and two of the poker worlds most infamous settings were the setting for the affair. The Fontana Lounge with Bellagio’s famous fountains erupting just outside the door, and the Bellagio poker room, with Bobby’s Room in the background hovered over a day of solid poker featuring the best players in the world. In the end 200 survived, and they will return at noon PDT tomorrow to play another five levels of deep stack poker.

A large percentage of pros in the field also meant that a large percentage of pros were among the players to hit the rail on day 2. The first of these was Ted Forrest, and he was soon joined by Florian Langman, who he tangled in an early pot with Paul Wasicka (who also hit the rail late in the day):

Wasicka raised to 2,400 under the gun and Marcel Luske made the call on the button. Florian Langmann also made the call in the big blind and the flop came K 10 5. Langmann checked and Wasicka bet 4,600. Luske mucked and Langmann check-raised to 15,000. Wasicka moved all in and Langmann thought it over for about a minute, before he pushed his last 25,000 into the middle. Wasicka showed pocket aces and Langmann turned up Q 9 for a straight and flush draw. The turn and river fell 2 3 and Langmann missed his outs to hit the rail.

Other notable players to hit the rail were: Nenad Medic, Allen Kessler, Layne Flack, Haralabos Voulgaris, Shannon Shorr, Erick Lindgren, Michael Binger, Freddy Deeb, former Card Player Player of the Year winners, David “The Dragon” Pham and Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi, former WPT champions, Tuan Le and Alan Goehring, former WSOP main event champions, Joe Hachem and Jerry Yang, Sam Farha, Howard Lederer, Jennifer Harman, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari, Erica Scheonberg, and none other than the Poker Brat and former WSOP main event champion, Phil Hellmuth.

A hilarious moment developed later in the day when one of the few unknown players in the field took a seat at Table 12 and found himself facing a pretty tough lineup. Victor Ramdin, seated next to him, made the introductions, and named everyone at the table along with some of their poker accomplishments.

Seat 1 - Joe Awada
Seat 2 - Victor Ramdin
Seat 3 - New Guy
Seat 4 - Isabelle Mercier
Seat 5 - Chau Giang
Seat 6 - Kristy Gazes
Seat 7 - Bruno Fitoussi
Seat 8 - Nick Schulman
Seat 9 - Unknown player
Seat 10 - Grant Lang

The player looked at the table in a shocked state of awe, and then quickly realized the bad beat he was dealt on the redraw.

The later part of the day also saw a number of players set themselves up for deep runs in the tournament by amassing huge stacks by the twilight level of play. Cory Carroll (356,000) accomplished this by doubling up through Tom “Durrrr” Dwan, and Andrew Robl (267,000) jumped into the top ten by doubling up through Dario Minieri. Even with these large stacks in their possession, the two players mentioned above where chasing a chip leader that had them both covered, Robert Mizrachi (523,200), who rode consistent play, with a little good timing for good measure all the way to the top.

At the end of play the leader board read like a who’s who of the poker world, and most notably hovering near the top is Carlos Mortensen (320,000). Mortensen won over $3.9 million when he took home the WPT Championship title last year, and a repeat victory this year would rank among the most impressive feats in poker history. We will see how Mortensen and the rest of the field fair tomorrow at noon PDT. Until then, every former champion in the history of the WPT will be awarded a bracelet tonight in the “O” Theater at Bellagio.

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