World Poker Tour Championship
April 21, 2008
The World Poker Tour's premier event is currently running at the Bellagio, in Las Vegas.
Four hundred and twenty-one players either paid the $25,000 buy-in or won their way into the tournament.
The chip leader at the end of day 2 is Robert Mizrachi, older brother of multiple WPT champ, Michael 'The Grinder' Mizrachi. His 523,000 chips cast an imposing shadow over the rest of the field.
Because of the high buy-in and championship status of this event, the players remaining list reads like a who's who of professonal poker players.
As does the list of players that have already been eliminated. Layne Flack, Shannon Shorr, Erick Lindgren, Michael Binger, Freddy Deeb, David “The Dragon” Pham, Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi, Tuan Le, Alan Goehring, Joe Hachem, Jerry Yang, Sam Farha, Howard Lederer, Jennifer Harman, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari, Erica Scheonberg, and none other than the Poker Brat and former WSOP main event champion himself, Phil Hellmuth.
All past WPT champions will be honored at the 'O' theatre within the Bellagio tonight, where they will be presented with the new WPT winner's bracelets. It's good that they have decided to commerate the winners of their events, but couldn't they have come up with something other than a bracelet to do it with? Why copy the WSOP? Why not a nice ring or a watch? Anyway - they're giving out bracelets too now - yay!
Here's the top five chip counts from Day 2.
| Place | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Robert Mizrachi | 523,200 |
| 2 | Bryan Devonshire | 393,400 |
| 3 | Cory Carroll | 384,700 |
| 4 | John Celii | 377,000 |
| 5 | Carlos Mortensen | 371,600 |
Carlos Mortenson won the event last year and is so far the only player to have won both the WSOP main event and the WPT championship. You can count on him to make life tough for anyone to take away his title!
Play at the Bellago resumes tomorrow, but in the meantime you can qualify for any big poker tournament in the world by playing the "Players Choice" tournaments at Bodog Poker.