Alexandre Reard Clinches Chip Lead After Fast and Furious Day 2 of the Main Event; Omar Lakhdari Hot on His Heels

Ten hours of poker were played in the Grand Casino Brussels Viage today, and each of them were full of drama, action and eliminations. Oh yes, there were plenty of eliminations. In total there were 149 runners at the start and by the end, just 16 were left standing once the dust had settled.

It meant a day of unrealised hopes for 133 players, but Alexandre Reard (pictured) was not one of them, taking through 2,400,000 through after a fantastic performance today. He was almost equalled by Omar Lakhdari who bagged 2,065,000 and between the two players, they hold a third of the total chips when play resumes tomorrow.

Aside from a brief blip just after the bubble burst, Reard was able to build steadily throughout the day. He was responsible for more than his fair share of eliminations with Miroslav Prasil, Julien Loire and WPT Champions Club member Davidi Kitai amongst the casualties.

It was a different story for Lakhdari (pictured). He began the day one of the top-ten stacks but some dramatic hands saw him swing throughout the day. That was until back-to-back clashes with Mickael Erbil gave him the boost he needed, and he didn’t look back from there.

Pierre Frederic Claes (1,410,000), Jonathan Abdellatif (1,065,000) also finished with seven-figure stacks, good for third and fourth places respectively. and Michael O’Brien (775,000) finished in fifth after finding a much-needed double against Kalidou Sow, which saw the Frenchman eliminated in 16th place (€3,800). Paul van Oort (745,000) finishes just outside the top five but is one to keep an eye on.

Just after the dinner break, the bubble burst and Ali Chaieb was the unfortunate bubble boy. He took it in his stride though and was in good company at the rail when Sandro Pitzanti busted next for a mincash of €2,000. Other big names to fall in the money were Niko Koop (€2,000), Tomas Macnamara (€2,200), Chris Da-Silva (€2,750), Anton Morgenstern (€2,750) and Michel Leibgorin (€3,200).

For most of the notables though it was an elimination outside of the money. Gaelle Baumann, Julien Sitbon, Gary Hasson, Yiannis Liperis and Bart Lybaert were some of those unable to make a return on their investment.

Tomorrow is the final day and we will play down to a winner and that person will take home €94,000* as well as the title, trophy and the all-important bragging rights.

Once again blind levels will be 60-minutes long right through until heads up is reached, when they will be reduced to 30 minutes.

As always, the WPT.com live updates team is here to guide you through it all and if today is anything to go by, there will be fireworks from the off.

WPTDS Brussels photos courtesy of Tomas Stacha.

* Includes a €2,000 seat to the WPTDS European Championship in Deauville in April.