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Home / Uncategorized / WSOP 2017: Another hurdle jumped in the race for $8.15 million as Day 2AB concludes

No one ever said it was going to be easy, and Day 2 players at the World Series of Poker Main Event know that better than most.

Day 1 might have been all about avoiding tough spots and making easy profit when the cards offered it, but Day 2 (specifically Day 2AB, featuring the survivors of the opening two flights) was a real tester.

As the curtain came down on its five two-hour levels, Team Pro’s Barry Greenstein was listening to Charlie Carrel (with 340,000 chips) tease Scott Seiver (with 280,000 chips) while Tobias Ziegler (with 180,000 chips) looked on.

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Barry Greenstein in tough company on Day 2

That would represent a tough table in a Super High Roller tournament, let alone what’s supposed to be the event with the most recreational players in the world.

Greenstein, who has 12 cashes already this series, had 133,000 of his own, which was still around 80 big blinds. That’s the beauty of the World Series. It’s never the time for panic, and no one is going to fluster Barry Greenstein.

Greenstein is one of three Team PokerStars Pros to make it through the day. The day started with 2,959 players and six Red Spades, but after Jen Shahade, Celina Lin and Maria Konnikova all departed, along with about 1,500 others, only Randy “nanonoko” Lew and Liv Boeree joined Greenstein in reaching for the bags.

Boeree was all-in and under threat about 35 minutes before the end, but her K♣ 10♥ had made a straight on a board of 3♦ 8♥ Jâ™  9♦ Qâ™  and Alexandre Amiel paid her off. Entering the day’s 30 minutes, Boeree had about 31,000 and at its conclusion had doubled again, to 72,500.

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Liv Boeree: Late double

Nanonoko, meanwhile, who we profiled earlier, is leading the way. He has 297,400 and has sat comfortably in the same seat all day. He is booked for Day 3 and perhaps the first Main Event min-cash of his career. At least.

At the very top of the leader board, Mickey Craft was closing in on 600,000 chips. He was at the summit at time of writing, but things won’t be confirmed until the bags come out and everything is collated. One thing we know for sure, however, is that there will be a new champion. Qui Nguyen was knocked out early today.

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Mickey Craft: New champion?

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The situation is vacant after Qui Nguyen was knocked out

There’s plenty to sink your teeth into from our coverage today. Click on the links sprinkled through the prose above. Tomorrow, we welcome back Andre Akkari, Aditya Agarwal, Fatima Moreira de Melo, Felipe Ramos, Jake Cody, Kevin Martin, Jeff Gross, Jason Mercier, Daniel Negreanu and ElkY as they try to spin it up into Day 3.

They will be among 3,300 hoping to do the same tomorrow, so it’s going to be another big one.

Addendum: Lawrence Bayley snuck past Mickey Craft at the finish to claim the end-of-Day-2AB chip lead by just a few with 618,000. Click here for a complete list of end of Day 2AB chip counts.


WSOP photos by PokerPhotoArchive.com.

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