Monday marks Day 2 of the 2011 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) Main Event in the Bahamas. Yesterday, 913 players turned out for Day 1B of the $10,000 buy-in poker tournament to create the largest PCA Main Event field ever at 1,560 entrants. A top prize of $2.3 million is up for grabs and 232 players will finish in the money. There are 645 players still standing.
Walid Bou-Habib bagged up the largest chip stack at the end of Day 1B at 239,000, just ahead of Timothy “highland” Finne’s second place arsenal of 225,100. Among those ending strong was 2003 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champion Chris Moneymaker, who scooped a pot at the expense of former World Poker Tour (WPT) Championship winner Yevgeniy “Jovial Gent” Timoshenko in the late going to move to 175,000 in chips. Moneymaker ended at 217,600, good for sixth place in the 2011 PCA Main Event on Day 1B.
Another Main Event champion in the house, Greg Raymer, didn’t fare as well on Sunday. Raymer, who won it all in 2004, bit the dust on Day 1B and won’t take to the felts at Noon ET today when play resumes for Day 2. Speaking of the WSOP Main Event, November Niner Matt Jarvis, who took eighth place last year for over $1 million, saw pocket kings crack his pocket aces when his opponent hit a set on the turn. The Canadian was relegated to the rail shortly thereafter.
Moving in the opposite direction as Jarvis was Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier, who is fresh off battling Viktor “Isildur1” Blom in the Swede’s first unmasked live heads-up match. Grospellier picked up aces and promptly doubled up against his opponent’s Big Slick when the board ran out five cards nine or lower. However, he’ll hold a stack of just 8,600 entering the second day of play in the Bahamas and will be on life support.
Other players eliminated on Sunday included Maria “Maridu” Mayrinck and Daniel Negreanu. The latter busted after his pocket eights could not out-sprint A-K, while Mayrinck departed in especially brutal fashion in a set-over-set situation. Surviving on behalf of Team PokerStars Pro was Liv Boeree, who open-shoved all-in on a board of Q-6-2-7. An opponent re-shoved and a third player in the hand folded. When the cards were revealed, Boeree tabled pocket sixes for a set, while her opponent also showed a set with pocket deuces. The river was a jack and Boeree doubled to 45,000; she ended the day at 41,200.
One of the major stories of Day 1B was boisterous poker pro Dwyte Pilgrim. The WSOP Circuit icon and WPT champion sat at just 9,000 in chips entering the final level, but by the time the smoke cleared, was up to nearly 200,000 and appeared in tenth place on the leaderboard. In one of the final hands of the night, Pilgrim hit a boat with A-10 on a board of A-10-6-7-A and sent Alexandre Gomes, a PokerStars pro, to the rail. Gomes held pocket fours for aces-up, which was no match for Pilgrim’s full house.
The top ten players on the leaderboard in the 2011 PCA Main Event after Day 1B include several names you’ll recognize:
1. Walid Bou-Habib – 239,000
2. Timothy “highland” Finne – 225,100
3. Carol Ventura – 225,000
4. Ilan Rouah – 224,900
5. Tommy Vedes – 220,200
6. Chris Moneymaker – 217,600
7. Adam Gabor – 207,900
8. Redmond Lee – 205,000
9. Bruno De Oliveira Severino – 201,700
10. Dwyte Pilgrim – 199,200
Other players still alive who hold chip stacks in the top 50 include:
11. Daniel Alaei – 189,300
13. Eric Buchman – 183,100
16. Brandon Steven – 167,300
21. Casey “bigdogpckt5s” Jarzabek – 154,300
24. Sam “KingKobeMVP” Stein – 151,000
30. Viktor “Isildur1” Blom – 141,900
46. Men “The Master” Nguyen – 124,000
Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for the latest PCA coverage.
