The first of two Day 2s is on tap for today at 12:00pm – Noon – and today is the day when this historic tournament moves into a new phase. Most of the players in the event today will begin the day with stacks they have brought forward from Day 1 – but not everyone!
Registration is still open in the event through the first four levels of play today – until the end of the break following level 12. This means two things. First, new players can still join; and second, a player who loses his or her stack in the early going can enter and re-enter. And who doesn’t want to give themselves the best chance possible at moving forward in such a value-heavy tournament?
The average stack of the players to start the day will be 2.2M in chips – and with a starting stack of 1M chips – i.e., 29bb in level 9 – new players (or re-entering players) are just one double-up from the average. The whole structure of the event provides significant support for the value of entering or re-entering during the early levels today.
The players who will be joining the event today include a who’s who of fantastic international-scale tournament pros as well as some terrific players of more local notoriety. Right at the top of the leaderboard on Day 2A is Playground Poker Club legend Sylvain Siebert, who despite having almost no other published results, has at least 2 major event final table appearances and has made deep runs in event after event here at the club.
Second on the list is another extreme – Tony Dunst is known for his dapper clothes and his “day job” with the WPT, but that just hides a prototypical tournament killer in the new model of tournament poker player. Analytical, thoughtful… and able to accumulate chips in a real hurry!
We could dig deeply into the stories of dozens of players up and down the starting list for the day – Seth Davies, who won a WPT at Playground, local player Shawn Siddiqui who won a high roller event recently, David Eldridge, who is on form having won the MILLIONS High Roller… it goes on and on.
The upshot is that today’s field is full of talent, and there are certain to be fireworks from beginning until the end! Good luck on the felts!