Day 2 of the $3,500 World Poker Tour Seminole Rock ‘N’ Roll Poker Open Championship returned 485 players from two Day 1 flights. Following ten levels of play, the field stands at 90 remaining players with Roman Koranev out in front bagging up 2.645 million.
He’s one of three players to cross the two million mark with Iulain Blebea (2.51 million) and Dung Nguyen (2.04 million). Joe McKeehan and Stephen Song round out the top five stacks.
Javier Zarco, Adam Hendrix, Jason Mercier, Fred Goldberg, Jesse Lonis, Jeremy Becker, Matthew Wantman and Landon Tice all return to action on Monday. Each returning player has $9,600 guaranteed with five-figure payouts kicking in at 79th place.
Christian Harder navigated his way to the money a day after calling himself “just a grinder” after being elite early in his career. He returns with a playable stack for his first WPT title.
Wantman is well-known among his peers, but casual poker fans would walk right by the WPT champion with $7.2 million in tournament earnings.
The field hit the money bubble shortly after returning from dinner. Hand-for-hand play lasted only two rounds before a short-stacked Nguyen Le ran into chipleader Aaron Gao’s pocket aces. At an adjacent table, Jorge Aristizabal’s pocket kings ran into a set of sixes and they split the min-cash.
Martin Jacobson (177th), Yunkyu Song (163rd), Ryan Riess (142nd), Tony Sinishtaj (138th), TK Miles (124th), Jessica Dawley (122nd), WPT Ambassador Brad Owen (119th) and Aaron Massey (117th) all cashed in the event but didn’t survive the day.
Day 3 resumes at noon on Monday, beginning with 60-minute levels. When the field is trimmed to 40 remaining players, the levels extend to 90 minutes.
The schedule calls for the field to play down to 16 remaining players on Monday’s Day 3. Tuesday will see the field play down to the final table with the live-streamed final table on Wednesday.
Top 5 stacks
| Rank | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Roman Korenev | 2,645,000 |
| 2 | Iulian Blebea | 2,525,000 |
| 3 | Dung Nguyen | 2,045,000 |
| 4 | Joe McKeehen | 1,820,000 |
| 5 | Stephen Song | 1,755,000 |
All photos courtesy of World Poker Tour - Drew Amato.
