Snowmageddon 2015 may not have hit Atlantic City as hard as expected, but Day 2 of the Borgata Winter Poker Open more than lived up to expectations with several huge pots, dramatic hands, and big names making it through eight levels of action to survive the day and inch closer to the money bubble and a potential payday of more than $700,000.
When the day began, there were 487 players who took their seats, including overall chip leader and past Winter Poker Open champ Andy Hwang. As the day progressed, the casualties piled up as big stacks clashed, short stacks failed to survive their all-ins, and a long day of poker thinned the field to 136 players, just 46 spots away from the money bubble.
Impressively, Hwang managed to hold on to a relatively big stack all day, bagging up 368,000. He is no longer at the top of the counts though. That honor belonged to the much larger stack of Justin Lunin-Pack, who ended the day with 837,500.
Tim Bishop is hot on Lunin-Pack’s heels with 804,000. Bishop doubled thru Matt Itkin, who spent much of the day atop the leaderboard, on one of the last hands of the night when Itkin called Bishop’s river shove with two pair only to run into Bishop’s set of eights.
Champions Club member Shawn Cunix made a lot of noise, literally and figuratively, when he shot to the top of the leaderboard on a bluff gone right, but he tapered off by night’s end, finishing with 476,000.
One of the most interesting table pairings of the day was East Coast brothers Mukul and Vinny Pahuja, who ended up side by side for the last couple of levels of the day. Just 62 miles from the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, these brothers engaged in some friendly competition with the reigning WPT Player of the Year Mukul besting his big brother chip-wise at day’s end, bagging 392,500 to Vinny’s 177,000.
Some of the other notables to survive the day include former WPT One to Watch Aaron Massey (507,000), Season X WPT Player of the Year Andy Frankenberger (404,000), Champions Club members James Calderaro (307,500) and Jared Jaffee (267,500), Tim West (305,000), and actor James Woods (89,500).
WPT commentator and partypoker Ambassador Mike Sexton is still alive with 143,500, but live stream host Tony Dunst, who won his way into this event via a DraftKings satellite, did not survive the day.
One DraftKings qualifier does remain in the field and that is Robert Lokken, who bagged up 98,000.
The long list of Day 2 casualties includes past winners Marvin Rettenmaier, Will Failla, Victor Ramdin, and Matthew Waxman, Cathy Dever, BLUFF.com WPT Ones to Watch Kristy Arnett and Justin Zaki, reigning WPT World Champion Keven Stammen, ClubWPT qualifier Edward Auh, and Ryan Riess.
Tomorrow play resumes at 12pm ET for another action-packed day which will see the money bubble burst and players get one step closer to the televised final table.