Alex Cordero Wins The Day (Again); Jake Cody In Contention
Day 2 of Event 59: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em is history with Alex Cordero as your current chip leader (822,000). Not too far behind are Franklin Johnson (789,000), Dimitri Holdeew (593,000) and Bao Dao with 477,000 in chips.
Today we saw a merging of the surviving players from Day 1a and Day 1b, which brought a total of 726 players together to duke it out. When all was said and done, just 51 would remain to see a Day 3.
Eliminations came swiftly and before we knew it, the money bubble had burst by the middle of the eleventh level. Some notables who were knocked out early, but still managed to cash include Jeff Madsen (456th), Jeffrey Manza (450th), Tony Dunst (424th) and Konstantin Puchkov (381st), who made history by cashing a record-breaking eleventh time in a single series.
Phil Ivey was another player to fall short on Day 2. After working his stack up to nearly 80,000 during level 13, Ivey's stack went on a bit of a roller-coaster ride - both swinging upward and downward as opponents doubled through him and he doubled through opponents. Ivey eventually met his end after pushing all in with 
and losing out to Yoav Tenenbaum's 
. Ivey's 208th-place finish marked his seventh cash of the series.
Alex Cordero (the overall chip leader of both Day 1's) used his abundance of chips to play many pots and put pressure on his opponents throughout the day. A key hand for Cordero occurred when he rivered the nut straight and got paid off by his lone opponent. Cordero's stack slipped a little toward the end of the night, but managed to come back strong by eliminating a couple of opponents in the last level.
Jake Cody will also be joining the field in Day 3. Cody's stack was anything but consistent throughout the day - both rising and falling as he found himself in big pots late in the day. By the end, Cody bagged up 302,000 and will be looking to make a run for a second gold bracelet.
Our remaining field will resume play tomorrow at 1:00 PM PST and continue until either ten levels have passed or a final table has been decided. Be sure to stick with us here at PokerNews as we provide you with all the action from the felt!