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Thursday, July 10, 2008
2008 WSOP Day 42: Surviving Day 2b
Jean-Robert Bellande is playing a whole different game of survival at the WSOP.
By Sarah Polson
For many, making it through Day 2b of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event was just not to be. With 2,378 players from Day 1c and 1d coming together on Wednesday, only 842 survived the day.
Among those who played on Wednesday were former World Champions Johnny Chan, Phil Hellmuth, Carlos Mortensen, Brad Daugherty, Chris Moneymaker and Joe Hachem, and reigning world champ Jerry Yang.
Yang was the first of the champions to bust out on Day 2b. He had started the day fairly low in chips but got all his money in with the best hand. He was holding A-J versus his opponent's A-9, but a nine fell on the flop and nothing came to help Yang.
The last time someone was able to win back-to-back Main Events was when Johnny Chan did it in 1987 and 1988. Greg "Fossilman" Raymer came close after his 2004 Main Event win. In 2005 he made it down to the final three tables of the Main Event, but couldn't pull off the win.
Daugherty was eliminated mid-afternoon after he committed his short stack with pocket nines and lost to A-Q when and ace hit on the flop.
Mortensen and Hachem both lasted until late in the day, but still couldn't quite hang on to make it to Day 3. Mortensen busted when his set of deuces ran into a set of queens. Hachem missed a flush draw in a three-handed pot to see the rest of his chips shipped away.
That just leaves Chan, Hellmuth and Moneymaker to represent for the former champs when Day 3 action begins today at noon.
The player with the most chips coming out of Day 2b was Peter Biebel, from Oshkosh, Wisc., who finished the day with $531,000 in chips. That's not enough to be the overall leader, however, since Brian Schaedlich amassed just over $800,000 in Day 2a.
Schaedlich is a recreational poker player who works full time as a special education teacher at Shaker Heights Middle School and Mercer Elementary School in the Cleveland, Ohio area.
"If I somehow win, I will not give up what I do for a living," Schaedlich said. "I think what I do is far too important for me to stop just because I won a lot of money. It's all about the kids."
The odds are pretty low for Schaedlich being able to pull off a win even with the chip lead going into Day 3. There are still several more days of play just to get down to the final table, which makes for plenty of time for players to chip away at his stack if he isn't able to continue his dominating play.
To illustrate how hard it is to maintain a chip lead and go on to win the Main Event, WSOP officials said no end-of-Day 1 chip leader has ever won the championship since the Series instituted a four-day or more format.
The highest finisher ever was John Bonetti, who amassed the biggest Day 1 stack percentage of anyone in the history of the WSOP in 1993 and managed to hang onto that chip lead during the first three days that year, but ended up taking third place.
A combined 1,308 players will return to action today at noon. Along with the players already listed, there is a laundry list of pros who've made it to Day 3.
Outhred often uses his skills to teach others, but this time he's schooling players in the Main Event.
Alex Outhred, who was on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?, is sitting third in the chip count. There is also Brandon Adams and Victor Ramdin with more than $300,000 in chips.
Sitting in the $200k range today are Nenad Medic, Robert Mizrachi, Kido Pham, Cliff Josephy, Alexander Kostritsyn, Jean-Robert Bellande and Brandon Cantu.
Phil Hellmuth sits in the $100,000 range, along with Matt Matros, Johnny Chan, Team Bodog's Evelyn Ng, Phil Gordon, Jeff Madsen, Kirill Gerasimov, Mark Vos, Bertrand Grospellier, Tony Hachem, Chau Giang, Thayer Rasmussen, Maya Geller-Antonius, Hoyt Corkins, Allen Cunningham, Darrell Dicken, Dave Colclough, Hevad Khan, Rolf Slotboom, Erik Seidel and Shane Warne.
The notable players with less than $100k in chips to start today include Mike Matusow, Gus Hansen, Amanda Baker, Barney Boatman, Scott Clements, Noah Boeken, John Duthie, Steve Zolotow, Rhett Butler, Chris Reslock, Alex Kravchenko, David Williams, Patrik Antonius and more.
PokerListings will have all the action in the 2008 WSOP Live Tournaments section, so stay tuned to see how your favorite players are doing.
Event 55
While the 2008 WSOP Main Event was taking a break on Monday, the Casino Employees No-Limit Hold'em tournament got off to a start and then completed play on Tuesday. With 930 players putting up the $500 buy-in, they were playing for a $418,500 prize pool.
The eventual winner was Jonathan Kotula, who works at O'Sheas in Las Vegas. He takes home an $87,929 top prize.
The final-table results for the event were:
| Place | Name | Hometown | Casino Property | Prize |
| 1st | Jonathan Kotula | Las Vegas | O'Sheas | $87,929 |
| 2nd | Kevin O'Harra | Tunica, Miss. | Harrah's Tunica | $56,748 |
| 3rd | Glenda Harrell | Seattle | Roxbury and Magic Lanes | $34,107 |
| 4th | Daniel Kohnen | Springboro, Ohio | Argosy Casino | $28,667 |
| 5th | Andrew Brock | Las Vegas | Wynn | $23,435 |
| 6th | Michael Anderson | Gilbert, Ariz. | Casino Arizona | $18,414 |
| 7th | Elaine Graham | Las Vegas | Sunset Station | $14,229 |
| 8th | David Dietrich | Las Vegas | Boyd Gaming Corp | $11,090 |
| 9th | Monica Conrad | Hemet, Calif. | Soboba Casino | $7,951 |
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