Sonny Franco is Runaway Chipleader of Day 2a of the Main Event

By Lisa Yiasemides

Day 2a has drawn to a close and of the 192 players that progressed from Days 1a and 1c, only 51 were left standing the Main Event organised by Club Pierre Charron and held at the Palais des Congrès de Paris.

Sonny Franco (944,000) takes through a convincing chip lead after busting Allan Tirel in the last quarter of play. It came down to a five-bet in from Tirel with ace-king in his hand, but Franco had him dominated with pocket-aces. The pot was worth over 700,000 and Franco wielded his stack well, pressuring his table in the run up to the bubble, scooping up a further 200,000 chips before the bell rang.

After finishing runner up in WPTDS Brussels in November, could this be start of a victory run for Franco?

Top ten stacks

Rewinding back to the beginning of the day and the chips flew in right from the start, with 62 eliminations by the first break and among them were some of the biggest names in the field.

Gregory Luttke-Grech made a shock early exit despite coming into the day with one of the biggest stacks. He was in good company at the rail though, with Bertrand Grospellier, Antoine Saout and Gaelle Baumann unable to spin up their short stacks.

Lasting a little longer but still exiting before the day’s end were fellow WPTDS Champions Francois Tosques and Bruno Benveniste, Romain Lewis, Dominik Panka, Bart Lybaert, Remi Castaignon, Julien Sitbon, Bruno Lopes and Maxim Panyak.

Still, Igor Picone may well feel he had the worst day of all when he became the bubble boy. He lost all his chips after defending his big blind with ace-jack and hitting top and third pair by the turn. Julien Loire (408,000) was the player to bust him as he had flopped a set of sevens and held through the river.

For all the bad news, there were still some big names who found a bag. Philipp Zukernik (247,000), partypoker Ambassador Bruno Fitoussi (215,000), Marc Uzan (180,000), Pierre Merlin (115,000) and Remigiusz Wyrzykiewicz (60,000) will all be back tomorrow.

The event has been a huge success with the 853 entries generating a huge €1,105,488 prize pool. So far, the survivors have guaranteed themselves at least a €2,500 return on their €1,500 investment but they will all have their sights on first place, which is worth €200,000*.

Day 2b is already running and by the end, it will be known whether anyone has eclipsed Franco’s stack. Once the bubble has been reached, the day will automatically be paused, and those players will combine with the Day 2a players and reconvene here tomorrow at 3 pm for the commencement of Day 3.

It is sure to be another exciting day of poker and, as always, the WPT.com live updates team will guide you through, with up-to-the-minute updates from start to finish.

Check out all the WPTDS Paris photos on Flickr. WPT Paris photos courtesy of Tomas Stacha.

*Plus a €2,000 package to the WPTDeepStacks European Championship Deauville