John Richards Leads the Pack of the 24 Players Left in Event #85: $3,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 6-Handed
At 2 p.m., the remaining players of Event #85: $3,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 6-Handed returned to the Amazon room at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino to battle on Day 2, knowing that 126 players would reach the money for a minimum of $4,489.
The day started with 173 players and they went flying to the rail, at least until the bubble approached. Ben Yu, Jeff Lisandro, Paul Volpe, Matt Stout or Owais Ahmed were among the 47 other players that failed to make it to the money.
The money bubble lasted for more than 75 minutes when, finally, Benny Glaser was eliminated, while Johan Guilbert made it into the money with only two big blinds. Glaser, who down to less than one big blind, managed at first to triple up, being all in preflop from the blind when he hit a pair of kings on the board. Glaser hanged around for two more orbits but who himself all in again from the big bling with jack-ten-six-five rainbow and fell against William Kakon who hit two pair with queen-jack-ten-four.
Some WSOP champions tried their hand at trying to catch John Richards. Norbert Szecsi (46th, $7,346), Loren Klein (74th, $5,174), Steven Wolansky (77th, $5,174), Leif Force (80th, $4,818) or five-time bracelet winner Michael Mizarchi (95th, $4,594) made the money but ultimately busted.
Only 24 players found a bag at the end of the day and it was John Richards who ended the night with the biggest stack of 1,949,000 chips. Richards surged as the chipleader during the middle of the day and eliminated Vivian Saliba (56th, $5,686) when he hit a runner-runner flush. Richards stayed at the top of the counts until the end of the night and busted Richard Turhim (39th, $8,628) after all the chips went in the middle on the flop with Turhim having aces and Richards a wrap and a flush draw. Richards hit his draw on the turn to climb to a stack above 1,500,000.
Richards, on a hot run, busted the winner ofEvent #67: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8 or Better, Robert Campbell (33th, $10,351) a few hands later when Campbell called all in a three-bet from Richards on a king-high flop. Richards was ahead with top and bottom pair but Campbell had an open-ended straight draw and outs to a higher two pair. Campbell didn��t hit, however, and the WSOP Player of the Year contender was out.
Following in the steps of Richards are Abraham Faroni (1,226,000), Michael Kuney (1,123,000) and Juha Helppi (1,085,000) who recently won the Event #72$10,000 Limit Hold'em Championship for $306,622.
Klein was sent into the rail after a very unfortunate hand. All the chips went in the middle on the turn in a massive three-way pot between Klein, Jonathan Gaviao, and Abraham Faroni. Klein and Gavaio both held Broadway to Faroni��s set of tens. Klein also held a set of jacks with an opportunity to draw out to both the nut flush or a full house in order to scoop the pot but Faroni hit the case ten on the river to scoop the entire pot and eliminate Klein in the process, to gasps from the surrounding rail.
The remaining players are all guaranteed to receive at least $12,678 for their efforts but are competing for the$448,392 first-place prize and one of the very last WSOP gold bracelets this summer.
The tournament will restart tomorrow, Saturday, July 14th, at 2 pm and will play down to the last six players with a 15-minute break every two levels. The limits will begin at 8,000/ 16,000 with the average stack at 695,833.
Stay tuned to PokerNews for the continuous live updates of all the action until a new champion is crowned.