Saturday nights in Las Vegas don’t always go exactly to plan.
But let's be honest: that’s half the fun of it.
Take the $50K Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller. The schedule suggested that Saturday’s Day 2 would end with 5 players remaining, but when the action finally stopped for the night there were still 8 players left.
And while it’s free to watch, viewers of the WSOP’s YouTube stream certainly got their money’s worth. A long day of play means that the stream ran through to 3:30am PT/6:30am ET. Any plans those viewers had for Sunday morning may need to be adjusted, too.
And with Daniel Negreanu making a deep run, there were plenty watching online. Unfortunately for the 7-time WSOP bracelet winner and his many fans, he would not make it to the end of the broadcast.
Kid Poker runs into some rough spots
Negreanu did make it past the bubble, however, locking up a payout of $107,940, but it was another case of things not quite going to plan.
He started the day second in chips behind only Sean Winter, and enjoyed the luxury of a big stack for much of the day.
Things started to go south for the man from the north, however, when the stream began. How tough did it get? Check out this rough spot. Could you ever find the fold?
Eventually his weekend plans unravelled completely in a pot versus the $50K NLH winner Santhosh Suvarna.
Negreanu opened for most of his stack with 
, but ran into Suvarna’s 
. The man from India set Negreanu all-in, but the board of 
only improved Suvarna’s aces to a straight.
As a result Negreanu went out in 11th, frustratingly short of the final table.
Cowen is the man to beat
That final table is led by the UK’s Robert Cowen, sitting on a stack of 9 million chips with the blinds at 50K/100K/100K.
Cowen built his lead with aggression and a sense of adventure, involved in plenty of big pots including a direct clash with Japan’s Naoya Kihara when both players were among the chip leaders.
Robert Cowen: 
Naoya Kihara: 
Cowen opened from early position with a min-raise to 160K, Kihara 3-bet to 600K and Cowen re-popped it to 1.9M.
On the 
flop Cowen led out for all-but-his entire stack, and Kihara raised to put him at risk. Kihara needed to improve, but none of his cards came when the board ran out 
to leave Cowen with threes full of aces.
Kihara was down, but not out, and remains in the hunt to win his third bracelet of the summer after wins in the $10K 2-7 Championship and the $10K Stud Championship.
Brutal bad beat bursts the bubble
Saturday’s long session included a money bubble which took 2.5 hours to resolve, with Richard Gryko the unfortunate bubble boy.
In a hand versus Brazil’s Yuri Dzivielevski, Gryko was an 83% favorite on the flop, an 88% favorite on the turn, and dead and buried on the river. Check the hand out below, including the brutal river card which cost Gryko $102K.
The final eight will return at 2pm on Sunday to (hopefully) put this one to bed, with blinds at 50K/100K/100K.
Here’s how the chips are stacked as they prepare to compete for one more day, with a first prize of $1,368,700 awaiting the winner.
- Robert Cowen (UK) — 9,060,000
- Joao Simao (Brazil) — 6,985,000
- Carlo Van Ravenswoud (Netherlands) — 6,165,000
- Kalyan Chivukula (USA) — 4,670,000
- Naoya Kihara (Japan) — 2,035,000
- Veselin Karakitukov (Bulgaria) — 1,455,000
- Yuri Dzivielevski (Brazil) — 1,450,000
- Santhosh Suvarna (India) — 1,185,000
Check out the action from Day 2 below.
Additional image courtesy of the WSOP.
