The survivors from the three starting flights of the 2015 World Poker Tour (WPT) Legends of Poker Main Event, plus some late entrants, came together in a single field for the first time on Tuesday for Day 2 of the tournament at the “legendary” (HA! I crack me up.) Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, California. Just 74 players moved on to Day 3 and leading the way is Michael Wang with 832,000 chips.
Yesterday, we told you that the combined field through Days 1A, 1B, and 1C was 721 and that 284 players made it through to Day 2, but that late registration Tuesday could change things. It did. Players were able to register up until the start of play Tuesday and, as it turned out, more people did that we had predicted. The Legends of Poker Main Event saw an additional 65 players pay $3,700 for 25 big blinds worth of chips (30,000 chips, to be exact) Tuesday, bringing the tournament total to 786 players. Thus, 349 people took their seats to begin Day 2.
Thus, with $3,450 of the $3,700 going toward the prize pool and 3 percent being withdrawn as an administration fee, the total prize pool for the 2015 WPT Legends of Poker Main Event is $2,630,349. A total of 72 players will make the money, minimum $7,583, with the winner cashing in for $675,942. As there are 74 players remaining, the short stacks likely didn’t sleep well Monday night, as there are still two eliminations needed before the money bubble bursts.
Michael Wang is the only player with more than 800,000 chips and, in fact, only 11 of the 74 remaining players even have over half a million. One of Wang’s biggest hands came near the end of the night. He was already in good shape, sitting with somewhere over 600,000 chips, but this boost really set him apart from the field. According to WPT.com, on a flop of T♥-7♥-2♠, a player moved all-in for 157,000 chips and Wang asked the dealer for a chip count. After receiving the number and pondering his move, Wang decided to make the call with pocket Queens. It was a wise decision, as his opponent had only made a pair of Tens. Neither the turn nor river helped either player, but by default that meant that it benefited Wang, so the other guy was out and Wang’s stack skyrocketed to, at the time, 790,000 chips.
Wang will look to increase his chip lead on Wednesday when Day 3 gets underway at 1:00pm.
2015 World Poker Tour Legends of Poker – Day 2 Chip Leaders
1. Michael Wang – 832,000
2. Corey Hochman – 765,000
3. Danny Fuhs – 761,000
4. Rubin Chappell – 696,000
5. Gregory Milliron – 650,000
6. Spike Le – 633,000
7. Dmitriy Bykov – 580,000
8. JC Tran – 574,000
9. KC Nam – 540,000
10. David Chase – 529,000
