Day 2: Silver Leads Final 13 Players
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With thanks to a big bluff catch in the final level of the evening, where Igor Kurganov moved all in on the river with just ace-high, Max Silver bagged the chip lead after Day 2 of Event #32: $10,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em Championship with 1,270,000. He and Hiren “Sunny” Patel are the only players who bagged seven-figure stacks – Patel finished Day 2 with 1,056,000 chips.
Unlike Silver, who called Kurganov’s river shove with just one pair, Patel was unable to catch a big bluff from Wade Townsend on the bubble in a five-bet pot. Townsend, the five-bettor, fired out a bet on the flop, then moved all in on the turn with just king-six-high. Patel folded and Townsend showed the bluff, but a few hours later Patel got his chips back, busting Townsend in a preflop all-in race.
Joining Silver and Patel on Day 3 will be a host of notables, including Lee Markholt and Erick Lindgren. Lindgren defeated Markholt heads up in the $5,000 buy-in six-handed event in 2013, earning $606,317 and his second gold bracelet. Both players have some work to do, as they are at the bottom of the chip counts entering the third and final day.
Also surviving the first two days of this star-studded event are 2009 WSOP Main Event champion Joe Cada, 2012 November Niner and bracelet winner Jeremy Ausmus, 2013 November Niner and bracelet winner JC Tran, 2014 bracelet winner George Danzer, and six-time bracelet winner Layne Flack.
Day 2 of Event #32 began with 97 players, and the eliminations were fast and furious en route to the bubble. Players who exited include Bill Klein, Alex Torreli, Chris Moorman, Chris Hunichen, Jonathan Duhamel, Faraz Jaka, Ludovic Lacay, and Zachary Gruneberg. The last player to exit without getting paid was 2012 WSOP Main Event champion Greg Merson, who bubbled at the hands of Clements.
All of the money went in the middle preflop between Merson, who won this event right before winning the Main Event, and Clements, the former showed down 
, and the latter 
. The flop was clean for the former champ, but the turn produced a king. Merson couldn’t find the two-outer on the river, and he was eliminated.
Among the players to bust in the money were Larry Wright, Nick Schulman, Brigette Lau, Jared Jaffee, Ben Volpe, Brock Parker, Ashton Griffin, and the start-of-day chip leader; Leonid Markin.
Markin increased his lead throughout the day, and remained one of the pace-setters after the bubble, but made a big misstep against Italian Dario Sammartino in Level 17. The Russian moved all in with 
on a flop of 
, and Sammartino called with 
. It was all over on the turn (
), and Sammartino was awarded the big pot when the 
completed the board.
On the Russian’s final hand, he ran pocket eights into Silver’s pocket kings, and was unable to improve.
The 13 survivors will return on Monday at 2 p.m. PT to battle it out for the $670,041 top prize and the coveted gold bracelet. PokerNews will be on hand to provide live updates straight from the tournament floor, including hand-for-hand coverage from the official final table of six.
Until then, good night from Las Vegas!