Exactly one month ago Vivek Rajkumar captured the Borgata Poker Open and the $1,424,500 first place prize that came with the World Poker Tour title. Now he’s only two days away from capturing his second WPT title and his second million dollar payday after taking the chip lead at the North American Poker Championship in Niagara Falls.

The action on Tuesday saw the field go from 99 players to the 27 that will return Wednesday afternoon. Amongst those not returning are Sebastien Ruthenberg, Steve Paul-Amrbose, Sorel Mizzi, Joe Sebok and Barry Greenstein.

Day 2 chipleader Gavin Smith is still very much in the running with 979,000 chips, which is 101,000 behind Rajkumar’s 1,080,000. Sitting in third is poker author Matt Matros with 943,000.

The top of the leaderboard is littered with big names as Kathy Liebert and Erik Seidel are fourth and fifth respectively. The 27 remaining players (chip counts below) will all return to the Fallsview Casino in Niagara on Wednesday at 12 pm ET to play down to the final six players that will make up the televised final table.

Final 27 Players Chip Counts

1. Vivek Rajkumar - 1,080,000
2. Gavin Smith - 979,000
3. Matt Matros - 943,000
4. Kathy Liebert - 879,000
5. Erik Seidel - 851,000
6. Nick Alafogiannis - 784,000
7. James Trenholm - 745,000
8. Brian Hawkins - 676,000
9. Sam Greenwood - 611,000
10. Khaled Aljoma - 552,000
11. Jason Potter - 497,000
12. Glen Witmer - 491,000
13. Donald Carlton - 476,000
14. Dominic Staniscia - 428,000
15. Marc Karam - 424,000
16. Martin Raus - 405,000
17. Bosko Basaric - 399,000
18. Ryan Fisler - 392,000
19. Xuan-Tien Nguyen - 350,000
20. Mark Zajdner - 324,000
21. Pat Pezzin - 252,000
22. Greg Ostrander - 235,000
23. Spiro Mikrogianakis - 225,000
24. Dashmir Zyli - 223,000
25. Joe Zappia - 187,000
26. Todd Sisley - 143,000
27. Miami John Cernuto - 92,000

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