Andrew Moreno Among Leaders After Day 2 of Monster Stack
Day 2 of Event #50: $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em Monster Stack has come to an end after 10 levels of play. The day began with 2,902 players and just 457 remain with three more days to go in this ever-popular event. First place will be paying out a cool $1,008,850 and the elusive gold WSOP bracelet.
Amon the top stack belongs to Andrew Moreno with a massive 2,034,000 in chips worth 101 big blinds going into Day 3. Blinds will begin at 10,000/20,000 with a 20,000 ante on Monday, June 24th, at 11 a.m. Moreno cashed two WSOP events this summer and made the final table of the Monster Stack in 2016 for a sixth-place finish worth $219,632 and has put himself in the best position possible to improve on that fantastic result three years on.
Brady Bullard is on his heels with 1,971,000, and Gergely Kulcsar rounds out the top counts with 1,839,000 in chips. The Italian pro Andrea Buonocore, also gradually built up his stack and found himself bagging 1,369,000.
Not only was today an important day to build a stack, but also because the money bubble was guaranteed to burst and players were aware of this. Towards the end of the fourth level of the day, it was Meikat Siu, who lost her last chips with ace-king versus aces, and Mateusz Moolhuizen, busting at the same time with a similar stack, who chop the 906th place finish for $1,124 each as a consolation prize.
At that point, all of the remaining players were guaranteed a min-cash worth $2,249 and as expected, a ton of notables made it through to the money but were unable to go deep, including Raffaele Sorrentino (492th -$3,204), Vinny Pahuja (521th - $3,204), Christophe De Meulder (538th - $3,204), Jake Schwartz (540th - $3,204), Joshua Turner (547th - $2,930), Ramon Colillas (553th - $2,930), Barry Greenstein (583th - $2,930), Matt Stout (585th - $3,930), Aditya Sushant (624th place - $2,705), Daniel Park ( 680th - $2,520),Steve Sung (681st place - $2,520) and Scott Davies (884th place - $2,249).
Kevin 'Racks' Roster, who is living out his WSOP 'Bucket List' fantasy while spreading the awareness of Sarcoma, the form of cancer that he was diagnosed in 2017, managed to bag a stack of 889,000 and is still pursuing his dream of winning a major poker title.
Players will battle it out tomorrow for another 10 levels with a 15-minute break every two levels and a 60-min break after the sixth level at around 5:30 p.m. The remaining players are guaranteed a payout of $3,534, with the winner being crowned on Wednesday. The top prize? A cool $1,008,850.
Some big names and bracelets winners in the quest of more gold found the bottom of a bag tonight, including Joe Cada (1,122,000), Pierre Neuville (1,195,000), Nika Futterman (1,253,000), Adrien Allain (1,100,000),Jon Turner (698,000), Neil Blumenfield (378,000), John Phan (467,000) and Matt Salsberg with the popular TV writer nursing a slightly shorter stack of 244,000.
Many others notables who advanced to Day 2 but were unable to make the money included Chris Ferguson, who lost his stack due to a set up against Eric Blair, Ferguson holding trip queens while Blair hit a full house, while Melanie Weisner, Kristy Arnett, Rainer Kempe, Andrew Lichtenberger, Gaelle Baumann, Julien Sitbon, Greg Raymer, Freddy Deeb, and Felipe Ramos all busted without visiting the payout desk on their way out of the Rio.
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