Day 2a field at WSOP concludes at 1359 players

07/10/2010

The $10,000 buy-in main event preliminary heats at the 41st World Series of Poker in Las Vegas continued to steadily whittle down the Day 1 entry fields Friday afternoon as the first of the Day 2 heats started out.

2,412 survivors from Days 1a and 1c were headed in the chip counts by Corwin Cole (228 000) as cards hit the air in the next stage of event 57, the main event No-Limit Hold'em Championship competition.

Still in the field were double Main Event champion Johnny Chan; the $50,000 Players' Champion, Michael Mizrachi and top caliber players like Barny Boatman, Sammy Farha, Carter Phillips, and Hoyt Corkins.

Multiple WSOP bracelet holder Jesper Hougaard, and internet high stakes cash game specialists Patrik Antonius and Cole South were also on the table lists.

By the time play reached 4 levels over a thousand of the entrants had been eliminated, including Dennis Phillips, Matt Glantz, Lee Markholt, Greg Mueller, Brock Parker, James Akenhead, Marcel Luske, Rob Hollink and David Bach.

Other high profile casualties included Carlos Mortensen, Berry Johnston, Tom McEvoy and Bobby Baldwin, along with 2010 bracelet winners Dutch Boyd and Daniel Alaei.

At level 8 tournament officials called for the chips to be bagged as Day 2a was concluded, with 1,359 players ready to go through to Day 3 and Boulos Estafanous in the lead on 344,100, closely pursued by Randy Dorfman on 337,000.

With Day 2b up next, competition for the winner’s prize of $8,944,138 is still wide open.