After two days of preliminary play at the 2008 Legends of Poker, 248 players returned, all with their eyes on the $1,116,428 first-place prize … or at least surviving to the final 36 players to finish in the money.
With the blinds starting at 200-400 with a 50 ante, even the shortest stacks had plenty of room to play, but that didn’t stop the flurry of bustouts, a wave of eliminations that didn’t slow down until the final hand of the night had been dealt. It seemed as if most of the players were more concerned with their rankings on the leader board rather than the number of big blinds they had in their stacks.
Coming into the day with the chip lead, Ali Eslami continued his upward march as his stack rose as each level progressed. In the penultimate round of the evening, Eslami got involved in a huge pot with another big stack named John Smith. On the river, Eslami pushed all in for more than 150,000 and was called. Eslami’s top two pair were enough to take the massive pot, and the end result was a stack of over 450,000. Despite his good fortune, Eslami had a brutal final level and ended the day just slightly above average with about 210,000.
The women were also a focus of the day as three of them converged on table 14 and were able to pick up most of the chips on their table. Esther Taylor, Kathy Liebert, and Maria Ho represented three of the four remaining women, and all survived with healthy stacks heading into day 3.
Former World Poker Tour champion Adam Weinraub came into the day in second place, but a combination of good cards and great play saw him steadily accumulate a monster stack, and he was soon controlling his table with over 500,000 in chips. Weinraub finished the day on top of the list with about 460,000.
Other notables that put themselves in great position for day 3 included David Chiu, Todd Keikoan, Mark Seif, Gabe Kaplan, Allen Cunningham, Paul “uclabruinz” Smith, Matt “mattg1983” Graham, Tuan Le, and Amit “amak316” Makhija.
Some of the major contenders in Card Player’s Player of the Year race are still alive as John Phan, Erik Seidel, and Erick Lindgren look to pick up crucial points to put some distance between themselves and the rest of the competition.
The remaining 82 players will continue tomorrow at 2 p.m. PST and are scheduled to continue until the money is reached at 36 players. Keep your browsers set on CardPlayer.com as we bring you live updates, videos, photos, and chip counts live from the floor of the Bicycle casino in Los Angeles.
