On Tuesday, the 2,004 players remaining from the first two Day 1 flights of the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event returned to the Rio to play two separate but simultaneous Day 2s. At the end of the day, 842 players remained.
Leading the field is France’s Gaelle Baumann with 505,800, followed closely by Mark Demirdjian (499,990). Others near the top of the leaderboard include Shaun Deeb (460,900), Gerard Lubas (449,500), Kevin Davis (394,000), Jason Somerville (332,700), Gavin Smith (279,100), and Team PokerStars Pros Vanessa Selbst (350,400) Eugene Katchalov (330,900), and Daniel Negreanu (277,200).
Further back, a slew of notable players are moving on to Day 3, including five former WSOP Main Event winners, Pius Heinz, Peter Eastgate, Jerry Yang, Robert Varkonyi and Dan Harrington. Actor Kevin Pollak, Vancouver Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo, Mike "Timex" McDonald, Brock Parker, Bernard Lee, Amnon Filippi, Dani Stern, Sammy Farha, Brock Parker, Jackie Glazier, David Pham, Brian Hastings, Eric Baldwin, Faraz Jaka, Gabe Kaplan, Maria Ho and Katie Dozier, are also among those players who have moved on to Day 3.
Gaelle Baumann rocketed to the top of the chip lead late in the day when she found herself in a massive all-in with aces versus kings. She hit an ace on the flop to take a stranglehold on the hand and, after the turn blanked, the river was a useless king and her shocked opponent was sent to the rail.
Former sitcom star and poker host Gabe Kaplan had a bit of a roller-coaster day, but well-timed sets kept him alive. Early in the day, he knocked out Darvin Moon when the former November Niner shoved with ace-king on a 
board, only to find Kaplan had pocket queens. Kaplan’s stack was up to 120,000 after that hand, but later in the day he was down around 75,000 when he shoved on a flop of 
. Kaplan had flopped a set with 
, and was called by pocket aces. Kaplan’s opponent missed his outs and Kaplan was up to 157,000. He finished the day with 141,500.
Maria Ho finished the day with 198,500 chips, many of which she took down in a three-handed pot after the dinner break. She and two opponents got all of their chips in the middle preflop, and Ho had them dominated. She had pocket aces, one opponent had pocket nines and the other had pocket sixes. The board ran out 
and Ho was up to 250,000.
Many top pros are still in the hunt for the gold bracelet, but a number of their fellow players failed to survive Day 2. Lost along the way were Isaac Haxton, Bryan Devonshire, Jeffrey Lisandro, JJ Liu, Matt Hawrilenko, Mike Matusow, Tony Dunst, David Williams, Chad Brown, former November Niner Martin Staszko, Andy Black, Lisa Hamilton, Erik Seidel, Brian Rast, Allen Cunningham, Justin Bonomo, Seniors NLHE winner Allyn Jaffrey-Shulman, and WSOP hall of famer Billy Baxter, among many others.
At the start of the day, William John had been the overwhelming chip leader with more than 100,000 chips ahead of his closest competitor, but ended up handing over most of his chips to Mark Demirdjian. He lost nearly 100,000 chips early on in a pot against Demirdjian and continued bleeding chips. The two were involved in a contentious hand in which Demirdjian called the clock on John and words were exchanged. In John’s final hand, he got the rest of his stack in on a flop of 
holding 
only to find his opponent had a set with pocket tens. The board blanked, and he went from chip leader to the rail in four levels.
On Tap
On Wednesday, there will be an important piece of old business to take care of. The WSOP National Championship will finally play down to a winner as the eight remaining players will return to the Rio to have their final table filmed for a later television broadcast. Cards will be in the air at 1300 PDT (2100 BST) on the ESPN Main Stage.
At the same time, the remaining 2,300 players from Day 1c of the Main Event will return at 1200 PDT (2000 BST) to play five levels. The Amazon Room expects some interesting table draws including one with Matt Affleck, Antonio Esfandiari and Ryan D’Angelo, another with the Day 1c chip leader joined by two former Main Event champs, Tom McEvoy and Joe Cada, and a third with Lee Watkinson, Shannon Shorr, former two-time Main Event winner Johnny Chan and Randy Lew.
The players who survive Day 2c will be combined with those who bagged chips by the end of Day 2a and 2b and entire field will finally meet Thursday for Day 3 action.
PokerNews will be there to cover all of the exciting action from these two events as players try to build their stacks hoping to make a deep run. We will have all the updates, hands, chip counts, bust outs and more from the Rio in our live reporting blog, so make to follow our coverage throughout the day.
Video of the Day
In the Video of the Day, Sarah Grant talks with the “dominating” Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu during the dinner break about how the Rocky movie series inspires and motivates him, then tests his Rocky trivia. See how you measure up and enjoy their competing Rocky Balboa impersonations.
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