Defending Champion Hanh Tran Looking To Repeat in $1,500 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw
Ten more one-hour levels of play on Day 2 of Event #33: $1,500 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw have been completed and 17 players remain out of the 139 who returned to action at the beginning of the day.
The day was full of action, with half of the field being eliminated before the second break as the money bubble burst at 71 players. When the dust settled, defending champion Hanh Tran found himself at the top of the leaderboard with 457,000.
When asked about taking the chip lead into the final day of play, he said it was like déjà vu. The Austrian topped a field of 356 entries last year to win this very tournament for $117,282. This year’s edition had over 100 more entries, totaling 467, with the eventual champion set to earn a first place prize of $144,027.
Hanh entered the day with just 29,100 and never looked back. He was seen consistently winning pots throughout the day, making big hands regularly and extracting as much value as he could from those hands. He built his stack to around 200,000 by the second break of the day. Two hours later, he was up to 361,000 and peaked right around 460,000 before bagging with the chip lead.
Hot on Tran’s tail are Jared Bleznick, (449,000), Frankie O’Dell, (436,000), and David Bach, (415,000). Day 1 chip leader Benny Glaser (332,000) and Daniel Strelitz (166,000) were also among the players to advance, with O’Dell and Strelitz both vying for their second WSOP bracelet of the summer.
Other players to make it into the money and fall short of finding a bag were Phil Hellmuth, Scott Bohlman, James Obst, Brian Hastings, and Yueqi Zhu.
Play will resume for at 2 p.m. local time on Saturday with play scheduled to continue until a winner is crowned. Limits will be 10,000/20,000 when cards are in the air with one-hour levels until the completion of the tournament. Will Tran be able to successfully pull off the repeat or will somebody else claim victory? PokerNews will be covering every piece of the action, so make sure to follow and catch it all.