Tuesday at the 47th annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) saw the return of both Day 1a and Day 1b survivors of Event #68: $10,000 MAIN EVENT NLHE Championship gather for Day 2ab. There were a total of 1,847 players take a seat at the start of play and that number would drop to 760 by the end of five and a half two-hour levels.
Like each day so far, an American bagged the top stack. San Diego, CA resident Valentin Vornicu built his stack up to 838,600 earning the chip lead. Jamie Shaevel (586,000), Alvaro Lopez (573,200), Ramin Hajiyev (558,400), and Chad Power (546,800) round out the top five.
Top Canadian stack after Day 1b went to World Poker Tour champion Eric Afriat who successfully defended that title on Day 2ab. Afriat sits in the top 10 overall with 501,000. Guillaume Nolet, PokerStars Team Online pro and no stranger to deep runs in the WSOP Main Event Marc-Andre Ladouceur, as well as Timothy Vukson are inside the top 25. Here is how the 31 surviving Canadians stack up:
| Eric Afriat | SAINT-LAURENT, QC, CA | 501,000 |
| Guillaume Nolet | Mcwatters, QC | 452,200 |
| Marc-Andre Ladouceur | Mont-Saint-Hilaire, QC, CA | 410,500 |
| Timothy Vukson | Mount Forest , ON | 403,400 |
| Owen Crowe | HALIFAX, NS | 385,000 |
| Scott Montgomery | Ottawa, ON | 316,300 |
| Ronald Giles | Airdrie, AB | 305,200 |
| Matt Jarvis | VANCOUVER, BC | 290,100 |
| Joseph Gallo | Tisdale, SK | 283,700 |
| Robert Anderson | Delta, BC | 249,000 |
| Justin Oliver | TORONTO, ON | 202,300 |
| Nikolaos Alafogiannis | NORTH YORK, ON | 199,900 |
| Michael Niwinski | Burnaby, BC | 163,900 |
| John Wakileh | Maple, ON | 158,600 |
| Ryan Mackinnon | FREDERICTON, NB | 140,500 |
| Daniel Cheater | Winnipeg, MB | 128,000 |
| Shayne Khanna | SAINT-LAMBERT, QC | 125,600 |
| Curtis Heron | Saskatoon, SK | 125,100 |
| Buck Ramsay | HAMILTON, ON | 117,700 |
| Curt Walter | White City, SK | 110,200 |
| Marc-Etienne McLaughlin | BROSSARD, QC | 104,800 |
| Philipp Schnetzer | Granville Ferry, NS | 98,500 |
| Jason Mann | BURNABY, BC | 94,700 |
| Michael Goodman | Thornhill, ON | 94,000 |
| Lucas Greenwood | TORONTO, ON | 93,400 |
| Michael Carter | Vancouver, BC | 85,200 |
| Min Huang | Vancouver, BC | 77,300 |
| Henry Strasser | TORONTO, ON | 64,100 |
| Darlene Lee | Delta, BC | 60,000 |
| Clinton Cockburn | Saskatoon, SK | 50,800 |
| Eric Levesque | Montreal, QC | 40,000 |
Some notable pros kept their dream alive including Gaelle Baumann, Tom Middleton, Alexander Kostritsyn, Mark Kroon, Brandon Adams, Matthew Ashton, Garry Gates, Prahlad Friedman, and Antonio Esfandiari.
For some though, the dream came to an end. Canadian WSOP bracelet winner Daniel Idema was eliminated along with Chad Holloway, Former November Niners Jesse Sylvia and Steve Gee, Victor Ramdin, and perhaps one of the most popular posts on the WSOP.com live-blog detailed the elimination of Howard Lederer. Poker’s new villain after his role in the Full Tilt Poker scandal.
Day 2c begins at 11:00 a.m. local time in Las Vegas on Wednesday with the over 3,000 players from Day 1c returning for battle.
The WSOP is now quickly coming to an end, but there is still hope for another Canadian bracelet. Good luck to all Canadians on their Main Event adventure in Las Vegas. Stay tuned to Canada Poker for up-to-date WSOP news and events and follow your favorite Canadian poker players throughout the series. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for live updates over the series.
