Day 2 Concludes with 2009 Champion Lemke on Top
What a day it has been. With the completion of Day 2 in Event #4: $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em here at the 2011 World Series of Poker, another great day of poker is in the history books. At the start of the day, 246 players returned from the starting field of 865. At the end of the day, the field was whittled down to 42 with Brain Lemke leading the way. He holds 960,000 in chips.
With the money set at 81 places, anyone with the slightest hint of math in their repertoire can figure out that the money bubble burst today. That means not everyone returning got a piece of the $4,065,500 prize pool. Some of those who were eliminated on the day, but failed to make the money included Randy Lew, Justin Young, Joe Cassidy, Adam Geyer, Sam Stein and Nick Schulman. The worst finish of the day went to Jacqueline Hughes, who found herself as the tournament bubble girl finishing in 82nd place.
Down to her last ante on the button, Hughes posted and was all in. JC Tran limped in and then Seth Berger raised all in from the cutoff seat for 48,000. Action folded back to Tran and he gave it up. First, Berger was pushed the small blind, big blind and Tran's limp before action was held up while the other tables finished. After all the other tables had completed their hands, the cards were turned over to determine Hughes' fate. She held the 
and Berger the 
. The flop came down 
and Berger stayed in front. Hughes chanted for a six, but the 
on the turn left her drawing dead. She got her wish on the river with the 
, but it was too late as she was drawing dead. Berger won the pot and eliminated Hughes, sending the remaining 81 players into the money.
We've noted some of the eliminated players, but there's still plenty of firepower left in this field. Returning for Day 3 will be Allen Bari, Matt Glantz, Kyle Bowker, Bernard Lee and Carlos Mortensen. The chip leader Lemke won this event back in 2009 and will be taking the pole position into Day 3.
Lemke had himself a solid day on the felt. One of the largest pots he took down came during an all-in confrontation with Justin Gardenhire. Lemke and Gardenhire got all of the money in preflop after some raising back and forth. Lemke held the 
and Gardenhire the 
. The board ran out 
to give Lemke the win and send his stack across the 500,000-chip mark.
It's also of note that Maria Ho still remains as well. She's fought her way to Day 3 in a field surrounded by men as the only woman left. Ho has eight WSOP cashes on record, making this her ninth. The largest of those came in 2007 when she took 38th place in the WSOP Main Event for $237,865.
Event #4 will continue on Saturday at 2:30 PM PT. Right now, it looks like the plan is to play down until the final table is reached and then call it a day. Of course, that could change depending on how fast things go. Right now, this event has been changed from a three-day event to a four-day event. First place is worth $874,116 and it's anyone's game.
Be sure to stay tuned to PokerNews for all the official live updates from the 2011 WSOP. We're looking forward to another exciting day tomorrow.