Moneymaker Tour: Heading into Day 2 at Lucky Chances

It took us a while to burst the bubble but we finally had a double play across two tables and went from 31 to 29 in one fell swoop. The scene was a joyful chaos of players, hangers-on, spouses and friends, interested players, media people, and Lucky Chances staffers persistently trying to keep us all under control.

Haven’t we all been here before? This is a friendly, local-filled room. They’re definitely not used to big crowds, multiple people with cameras aiming lenses at them, and $49k ($19k cash plus a $30k Platinum Pass) awaiting the winner tomorrow. I felt for this guy.

So Junior Merafuentes (the runner-up at Stones) shoved in his last 19k from under-the-gun. Folded around to the big blind (6k), who looked at his cards and laughed. “I should have just called without looking, which is probably correct. I have a terrible hand.” Junior smiled – I guess he didn’t have a terrible hand. We all watched. Finally the big blind tossed 82o in face-up and said “I fold”. Junior showed pocket 9’s – I guess he’d have taken a call against that hand.

This woman agonized over a call and ultimately ended up being half of the double bust-out that saw her and another player chop a $150 min-cash.

And here we are. 106 coming back tomorrow at 9:30am (and they’re all guaranteed a min-cash of $150). Here are the top couple dozen chip leaders. They’ll come back at level 13, blinds of 2k-3k, and a 3k big blind ante. Average chip stack is a hair under 80k.

1. Benny Cruz – 241k
2. Evan Sandberg – 216k
3. Thomas Haury – 187k
4. Jonathan Finch – 178k
5. Jompop Laongsuwan – 177k
6. Jimmy Zhou – 166k
7. Paul Chavez – 160k
8. Dino Anicete – 158k
9. Luis Jascques – 158k
10. Jesse May – 158k (no, not that Jesse May)
11. Robert Myers – 153k
12. Allen Dias – 146k
13. James Smith – 146k
14. Gary Chau – 141k
15. Adi Berman – 135k
16. Jannsen Mercado – 133k
17. Shelly Miller – 133k
18. Richard Stubbles – 131k
19. Yang Min – 129k (we’ll have to see how much Min cashes)
20. Guilherme Borges – 128k
21. Huihan Wu – 126k
22. Marcus Newbury – 123k
23. Craig Gold – 120k
24. Chris Moneymaker – 115k (yes, that Chris Moneymaker)

See you all tomorrow