The players in The Second Chance have just come off their last break of the night, and will play through 2 more 45-minute levels before calling it a night and bagging for Day 2.

Leading the field is Ari Engel, who has recently crossed the 200K mark. Below is a list of the top stacks during this final break of Day 1 in Event 14:

Ari Engel

The Second Chance field is down to 4 tables, and here are the players still in contention of becoming our Event 14 champion:

Jason Helder just got the best of Nabil Assaff in two almost back-to-back hands to jump up the leaderboard.

In the first hand, Jason doubled his 30K-and-change stack preflop with pocket Kings versus the AK of Nabil. Moments later, the two players were involved in a 3-way pot where Alessandro Bordonaro lead out 4K (into a 10K pot) on a board. Jason flat called the bet, and Nabil, who covered both players with his 75K stack, pushed all-in over the top from the button. Alessandro mucked his hand, while Jason quickly threw in some chips to announce a call.

Jason:
Nabil:

Nabil was drawing fairly slim versus the flopped straight of his opponent, and the running and brought him no help. Jason slid forward 67,700 to be doubled up, plus received what was already in the pot, putting him amongst the chip leaders here in level 11 of the Second Chance Event.

Nabil was left with a few big blinds, and was eliminated on the next hand of play.

Players in the Second Chance event have returned from their second break of the day and with the end of the break comes the end of late registration. The final number of players in the Second Chance event is 127 – we’ll publish full prize details shortly.

The leaderboard at the break is short – one player, Kevin O’Donnell, has moved way ahead of the field and is playing 144K and just one more player – Ari Engel – is over 100K. There are several players in the 80K to 95K range so we’ll see if any of them to make a move.

Anyone interested in playing in today’s $1,500 + $150 Second Chance event has just 40 more minutes to register – late reg closes at the end of the next break. There are still a few players here at the club who are likely to jump in the tournament at the last minute, so the final number should be a little bit north of the current 120 player field size.

There are a lot of great players in the event, including some touring pros as well as some local players that have distinguished themselves on the felts. Some of the players of note include:

• Ari Engel
• Andy Frankenberger
• Carter Swidler
• Jason Conforti
• Michael Korovine
• Chris Arvanitis
• Tomas Larivée Magni
• Carla Sabini

Players in the Second Chance event have just taken their first break of the day and during the break we found that there are currently 3 chip leaders playing stacks of 50K or greater.

1. Kevin O’Donnell – 57,600
2. Paul El-Khoury – 56,100
3. Christopher Lockhart – 50,200

The players have a very long way to go before anything is decided today, however, and we’re always curious to see if early leaders can maintain and improve upon their lead as the tournament goes deeper.

Late registration is still available through 3 full levels plus the next break, so there’s still lots of time to join the fun today!