Well it changed in a big way as his dominance early paid off and allowed him to get into a heads up match with Lee Watkinson. Playing against one of the more accomplished players in the game is not a great situation when you are running bad. Luckily for Cantu, he did not really have to worry about that for long as the cards went good at exactly the right time and he managed to capture the title. He takes home $228,832 and the bracelet.

In other tournaments…

The $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. Event will start day three with 53 of the original 95 players. This tournament has been about as all over the board as you can imagine and the leader board seems to change every few minutes. The field has to take notice the player that is sitting on top now though as Gun Hansen can be quite the handful when he has a chip lead.

Some of the players that have been struggling in this WSOP are taking advantage of the small field and taking their shot at a bracelet. While this event does not have the entries that the Main Event does, there is no doubting the prestige that the players give to this event. Day three should be another long one and you can count on that leader board showing just as much action as we see on the tables.

The Limit Hold’em Shootout reached its final table very early in the morning. The players continued until about 1:30am when play was halted with the final 8. Greg Mueller has a place at the final table as does David Williams. All players will start the day with 360,000.

Event 51 had relatively slow play and still has about 350 players remaining. In order for this tourney to stay on schedule, they would have needed the field of 271 to get well below 300. Expect a full day of play and possibly a very long final day to this tourney. The chip leader is currently Christopher Bonita with 131,700 in chips.

Events 52 and 53 will kick off today and both should have fairly large fields. The Triple Chance No Limit event should be packed as players are getting free limited rebuys in the early stages of the tournament. This is going to make for some very aggressive play and some monstrous stacks heading into day 2. A good run of cards can put some well ahead of the field in this format. Should be a lot of fun to watch.

In other tournaments…

There are only 20 players left in the Omaha Split tourney, but nobody is even close to Brandon Cantu at this point. He has had an unbelievably dominating day and is almost seems as though he is the only player winning big hands. While he entered this day with a very close leader board, he has since taken over the tournament and accumulated almost a million in chips. With the next closest player only having 280,000, this is his tournament to lose.

The $50,000 World Championship H.O.R.S.E. Tournament may have a short field, but the first place prize is anything but. The winner of this very prestigious tournament will walk away with $1,276,802 and the title of the best all around player in the game. Justin Smith has made some early moves and currently leads the tournament with 290,000, but he is going to have to fight off the likes of Jeff Lisandro, Daniel Negreunu and Scotty Nguyen if he wants to take down this tournament. Nobody has been eliminated yet, but there are some amazingly short stacks from the 150,000 starting point.

The Limit Hold’em Shootout tournament has gotten underway and has a surprisingly small field of 571 players. This format is very popular and you would have thought that they would have hit the 1,000 player max on this one. Perhaps everyone is catching some rest before the Main Event gets here or they are enjoying the H.O.R.S.E. tournament. This one has just gone to dinner break.