Tuesday was a bit of an odd-ball day on the 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event schedule, as two Day 2’s ran concurrently. Once the Main Event got enormous several years ago, Day 1 was split into four flights with the survivors of two of those flights meeting up for Day 2A and survivors from the other two flights combining for Day 2B. As a way to shorten the Main Event, this structure was changed last year. Instead of four Day 1 flights, there are now three. The odd number does not allow for the nice, clean Day 2 split that previously existed, though, so now the survivors from each Day 1 flight advance to their own Day 2 flight. On Tuesday, players who made it out of Day 1A played in Day 2A, while players from Day 1B played in Day 2B in a totally separate room. This little quirk made it so that there were essentially two Main Event tourneys running simultaneously.
Day 2A started with 584 players, while Day 2B started with 1,296. An even 800 players from the two flights combined advanced to Day 3. Nick Schwarmann is the top gun of those 800, coming out of Day 2B to finish with 413,600 chips, the only person to eclipse 400,000. Schwarmann came close to winning his first WSOP bracelet in June when he finished as the runner-up in the $2,500 Four-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event. He does have one “semi-major” (or maybe “mid-major” for NCAA basketball fans out there) tournament win: the 2011 Heartland Poker Tour Daytona Beach Main Event, for which he won $167,944.
Jason “TheMasterJ33” DeWitt, the Day 2A chip leader, is not far behind with 382,900 chips. DeWitt has one WSOP bracelet to his credit, won in the 2010 WSOP $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em event. He also has four other final table appearances in his career plus one final table bubble this year.
Some select notables making it to Day 3 include last year’s Main Event champ Greg Merson, Kenny Tran, this year’s One Drop High Roller winner Tony Gregg, Annette Obrestad, Scott Seiver, Phil Galfond, Andy Frankenberger, Greg Mueller, and last year’s 11th place finisher, Elisabeth Hille.
2003 champ Chris Moneymaker will not be claiming another title on the 10th anniversary of his poker world-changing victory, and Barry Greenstein, David Williams, Mike Sexton, John Juanda, and Brian Rast all bowed out as well.
There is one man, though, that everyone will be watching come Thursday. Doyle Brunson, who did not even expect to play in any tournaments at the 2013 WSOP, survived Day 2 and did so in really good shape, finishing with 224,000 chips. He updated fans on Twitter throughout the night, ending with, “45 minutes to go for day two. I feel like a truck ran over me but my stack is growing, 240k”
Day 2C is already underway at the Rio. Those who make it through today will combine with the players from Days 2A and 2B to finally form a unified field on Thursday.
2013 World Series of Poker Main Event – Day 2A Chip Leaders
- Jason DeWitt – 382,900
- Sergio Castelluccio – 360,500
- Felix Kurmayr – 324,800
- Michiel Brummelhuis – 309,500
- Jonathan Lane – 303,400
- Kenny Tran – 301,300
- Gregory Morris – 300,900
- Steve Gee – 300,600
- Stephane Lacas – 292,500
- Mikhail Shalamov – 283,600
2013 World Series of Poker Main Event – Day 2B Chip Leaders
- Nick Schwarmann – 413,600
- Aage Ravn – 370,900
- Rupert Elder – 342,500
- Mikhail Petrov – 328,000
- Ian Gordon – 324,600
- Nick Guagenti – 322,600
- Raj Vohra – 322,200
- Jonas Lauck – 308,300
- Kyle White – 303,200
- Herbert Farber – 298,900
