WPT Championship Wraps Day 2 with Grospellier, Billirakis Chasing Thorel

Lance Bradley | April 21, 2009

The second day of play is in the books at the World Poker Tour Championship at Bellagio and there are some very familiar names and faces at the top of the leaderboard.

Bertrand ‘eLKy’ Grospellier, who leads the race for BLUFF Magazine Player of the Year presented by Lugz, sits in second with 678,300. Right behind the Frenchman is Steve ‘MrSmokey1′ Billirakis with 672,400. Both players are chasing the leader Jean Noel Thorel who wound up with 743,500.

The day started with 301 players and wrapped up with 168 after five levels of play. Included in those who hit the rail in the $25,000 buy-in event were Cliff Josephy, Vanessa Rousso, Tuan Le, Barry Greenstein, Erik Seidel, Jonathan Little, David Pham and Gavin Smith.

With just under half of the 338-player field remaining the average stack is just over 200,000. Howard Lederer and Daniel Negreanu are two of the shortest remaining stacks and both will have plenty of work to do on Tuesday if they hope to be in contention for the $2,143,655 first place prize.

One player who did manage to nurse a short stack back to relative health was WSOP Academy instructor Alex Outhred. The former Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader contestant started the day with only 25,000 and managed to crest the 200,000 mark before dropping down to 99,000 as the day wrapped up.

The players will return to the Fontana Lounge at the Bellagio Tuesday at Noon PT.

WPT Championship Top 10 Day 2 Chip Counts