WSOP: day two play of the World Series of Poker Main Event
9th July, 2008
Many are finding the structure of the World Series of Poker Main Event to be quite unusual as the players who played on 1A had a four-day break before getting back to the game.
The structure has been broken up into different sessions because the field has become too large to house the whole tournament in one casino on the same day. Therefore, the field has been split up temporarily and will be integrated as players drop out of the tournament.
“It’s so early still that it doesn’t mean much,” said Ben Sarnoff, a lawyer/poker player from San Francisco. “Usually you get a chip stack, you’re playing the next day. It was really weird to have a four-day break living with a chip stack. Real unusual.”
Sarnoff had a pretty good first day, but has seen some things change since having the four-day break and his fortunes aren’t running quite the same.
The chip leader of Tuesday’s group and second overall was Mark Garner, an investment broker/poker player from Little Rock, Arkansas. He started off the day with 194,900 chips, which is only less than Henning Granstad from Oslo, Norway, who has 242,950 chips.
“It’s a long grind fixing to come,” Garner said. “All that was was a good start. It wasn’t a finish, it was a start.”
Many players are faced with blinds that are constantly raising and chip stacks that seem to be dwindling. To stick around in this tournament a player might have to put his stack in the middle multiple times, risking their poker tournament life.
“There are a lot of hands that I’ve had to fold because I didn’t have chips to fight it out and try to bluff people with,” said Barry Greenstein, poker professional who started Tuesday with 21,500 chips. “I’ve got to play better quality hands – big cards and big pairs, stuff like that.”
By Michael
