WPT World Championship Day 2: Abe Mosseri Takes the Lead

More than tripling his chip stack from the start of the day, Abe Mosseri ended Day 2 of the 2011 World Poker Tour (WPT) World Championship as the chip leader with 685,200 chips, as the field was slowly whittled away.  With 116 of the original 220 players remaining, there is still a long way to go until the money bubble is even approached, as just 27 will walk away with a profit to show for their efforts.

Mosseri began Sunday in excellent shape, sitting at table 49, seat 4, with 200,525 chips, good for 14th place overall.  He was the last of the players who had eclipsed the 200,000 chip mark, just 49,000 behind the chip leader, Christian “charder30” Harder (while 49,000 was a lot compared to the blinds, it was really nothing in the grand scheme of the tournament).  He made his move to the top of the leaderboard early, within the first hour of play.

With blinds at 400/800 and a 100 chip ante in Level 6, Mosseri and 2007 WPT Bellagio Cup III champ Kevin “BeL0WaB0Ve” Saul got all their chips into the middle after a flop of T-9-8.  Saul was in great shape when the cards were flipped over, showing Q-J for the nut straight, while Mosseri held T-9 for top two pair.  Mosseri had just four outs available to make his full house and a very slim chance at a runner-runner straight for a chop.  But as you already know, Mosseri is the chip leader, so of course, one of his outs – a nine – did land on the river, giving him a pot worth about 400,000 chips.

Abe Mosseri does not have boat loads of documented live tournament cashes in his career, but when he does cash, he does it on the biggest stages.  Of his thirteen live cashes, according to TheHendonMob.com database, all but one of them are in World Series of Poker (WSOP) or WPT events.  Not only that, but only two of those twelve are in events with buy-ins lower than $10,000: the 2007 WPT Borgata Poker Open Championship Event and the 2009 WSOP $2,500 Deuce to Seven Triple Draw Event.  We can probably let those slide, though, as the WPT event featured a $9,700 buy-in and he won his first and only bracelet in the WSOP event.  All told, the Manhattan resident has won almost $900,000 on the live tournament circuit, with seven WSOP cashes (including two final tables and that one bracelet) and five WPT cashes (one final table).

Our former chip leader Harder finished Day 2 with a smaller chip stack than he had when he started the day, but he’s still in solid shape in 33rd place with 232,100 chips.  Other notables in the top 30 include Scott Seiver (5th place), Erik Seidel (11th), Yevgeniy Timoshenko (17th), Andrew Lichtenberger (18th), Kenny Tran (24th), Shannon Shorr (27th), and Doyle Brunson (29th).

Arguably the roughest beat of the day belonged to Andrew “good2cu” Robl, who, along with 32 other players, waited until Day 2 to register for the WPT World Championship.  One of the last four people to register, Robl didn’t even last an orbit before running into another late entry, Joe Cassidy.  We’ll let Robl’s tweet speak for itself:

“I buy into WPT late sane [sic] time as Joe Cassidy. 2nd hand he opens CO I 3 bet button he 4 bet I shove QQ he calls KK. GG 25k”

True, it wasn’t really a “bad” beat, per se, but it’s rough to plunk down $25,000 only to get coolered for all your chips in just a few minutes.

Play will resume at the Bellagio on Monday at noon Pacific time as the remaining 116 players try to position themselves for the $1,618,344 first prize.

End of Day 2 Chip Leaders

1. Abe Mosseri – 685,200
2. Alan Sternberg – 606,400
3. Steven Kelly – 566,500
4. Roger Teska – 534,900
5. Scott Seiver – 461,300
6. Joshua Bergman – 415,600
7. Justin Young – 414,100
8. Robert Mercer – 408,600
9. David Peters – 401,400
10. Darren Elias – 342,900

2011 WPT Championship Prize Structure (Place/Prize)

$5,309,500 prize pool

1. $1,618,344
2. $1,061,900
3. $589,355
4. $371,665
5. $278,749
6. $225,654
7. $172,559
8. $119,464
9. $84,952
10-12. $63,714
13-15. $53,095
16-18. $42,476
19-27. $37,167