Day 2a is in the Books and the Carnage has begun

Posted by pokerguru on July 9, 2009

We all knew this was going to be a marathon and that the biggest names in poker were going to have a target on their heads.  The survivors from Day 1a and Day 1b sat down at the tables yesterday and some of the names that had managed to build up formidable stacks were shown the rail by the end of the day.  All in all, 1,476 player started the day and only 630 of them still had chips when the final hand was dealt.

Some of the players that failed to make it through the day were Mike Matusow, Jennifer Tilley, Phil Laak, Gus Hansen, Eli Elezra, Todd Brunson, Gavin Smith, Amarillo Slim and Tony G.  While they will be watching from the side lines, Chris Ferguson, Andy Black, Greg Mueller, Mike Sexton and Thor Hansen have all managed to get through to the next session.

Day 2b should be interesting as the field for this session will be much larger.  A lot of players chose to play in the 2 late Day 1’s and we will see about 3,500 players start the day off before they combine fields to move forward.  It was also interesting that a lot of the professionals chose to start off on the later days as they knew they would also be packed with a lot of the amateurs that were getting satellite tickets into the Main Event.

We have talked many times about how difficult it is for the pros to navigate through large fields because of the fact that everyone wants to be the person that can say, “I took out (fill in name of pro here).”  Not only that, but by playing in one of the first two sessions, you would get a significant more amount of rest in compared to the later days when the fields get combined.  Make no mistake about it, these players will wear down with the grind that they are faced with.

We are a long way from the bubble as the top 648 players get paid.  You can expect that stage not be reached until Friday at the earliest.  When that time approached, play will come to grinding halt as everyone can smell the money and do not want to be the person that goes out on the bubble in the largest stage that poker sees every year.

Strap in and get ready for another long session of poker on Wednesday.  They will hopefully get this field down to under 1,000 players, leaving less than 2,000 overall to go into Day 3.  That is when the real fun begins as we will have all of the players in the same room for the first time since the tournament has started.