Lane AndersonThe marquee event of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) resumed play on Wednesday with the players from Days 1a and 1b of the Main Event returning to the Rio.
The 470 players from Day 1a and the 1,154 from Day 1b took to the tables for another five two-hour levels, and when play concluded, a total of 654 players still had chips to carry forward to Day 3.
For Canadian WSOP bracelet winner and WSOP Circuit ring winner Charles Sylvestre who was the top Canadian on Day 1a, it was a day that saw him soar before settling to a closer-to-average position. He began the day with 133,025 chips and added an additional 100,000 to it by the first break to become the overall chip leader. When the second break came, Sylvestre was still leading, but with as much as 275,000 chips. By the end of the day, however, Sylvestre was down to 142,300, which is still better than average.
The best stack at the end of play belonged to American Amar Anand who has no previous WSOP results but is well-positioned to make his first cash of the series a good one. He counted out a total of 603,500 chips, which is well ahead of Calvin Lee who had 500,700 for the second-best stack.
Two Canadians finished the day in the top 10. Joe Lu bagged 387,400 for seventh in the counts, and Will Molson was right behind in eighth with 370,300.
Here are all of the 38 Canadians who survived Day 2a/b:
| Player | Chips | Player | Chips | Player | Chips | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joe Lu | 387,400 | Will Molson | 370,300 | James Hawley | 288,000 | Scott Montgomery | 218,900 |
| Joseph Bower | 214,000 | Paul Klann | 208,000 | Chaayanath Mysore | 205,500 | Buck Ramsay | 191,800 |
| Jonathan Duhamel | 177,400 | Samuel Gagnon | 170,000 | Ping Lin | 169,300 | Chanracy Khun | 146,300 |
| Charles Sylvestre | 142,300 | Angie Gelinas | 134,700 | Marc-Andre Ladouceur | 112,100 | Maria Parlatore | 107,500 |
| Harsukhpaul Sangha | 105,900 | Ryan Mackinnon | 100,500 | Joseph Andres | 92,700 | Michael Dietrich | 92,400 |
| Samuel Ngai | 87,800 | Matthew Dietrich | 84,000 | Paul Woodhouse | 79,000 | Chris Kirkland | 71,500 |
| Shaan Siddiqui | 67,800 | Ken McKay | 64,700 | Michael Bartholomew | 63,800 | Jacob Kipfer | 63,500 |
| Michael Bochansky | 55,600 | Ryan Hall | 55,500 | Peter Raimondi | 52,700 | Jaime Staples | 51,400 |
| Sebastian Troen | 51,300 | Timothy Adams | 50,600 | Enzo Deluca | 45,100 | Edward Kershaw | 33,000 |
| Jason Mann | 25,500 | Jun Ishii | 24,700 |
Going wire to wire, Joe Lu was the top Canadian stack at the start of the day, and finished with the same position. The Albertan has five previous WSOP cashes, but none in the Main Event. His best-ever like tournament result was coming second in the Summer Super Stack Main Event last summer at Deerfoot Inn & Casino in Calgary, Alberta for $36,500.
The second-best Canadian, Will Molson, is a familiar name to many. Though he has just four WSOP cashes totalling less than $40,000, Molson is a world traveller playing many of the biggest international tournaments with more than $2M in live earnings. His best result was when he won the $25,500 High Roller at PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in 2011 for $1,072,850.
Thursday will see the Day 1c players return for Day 2c, and it will be a much larger field than the other two combined on Wednesday. There will be 2,765 hopeful poker players returning to the tables for another 10 hours of play. Those who survive the day will join the 654 from Day 2a/b for Day 3 on Friday — the first day the whole field will be together at once.
Play resumes at noon on Thursday and PokerNews Canada will be following along to bring you another end-of-day recap.
Details courtesy of the WSOP Live Blog.
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