It took just over an hour for the money bubble to burst on Day 2 of the $1,000 No Limit Hold’em Event #4 of the 2009 World Series of Poker. It was at this point that the field was seperated into pretenders and serious contenders.

Day 2 started with 760 players, from an original field of 6,012, battling to finish in the top 621, the number of spots being paid. It was just about an hour into play Monday when the money bubble neared and things began to get interesting.

“Once I cash, I don’t (care) about anything but winning,” said Ed Brogdon. His mentality was echoed throughout the room as action clearly dwindled in the hands leading up to the money. Alas, the money bubble did burst, to an eruption of applause among the remaining players. Immediately after, numerous players engaged in a series of “all-ins” in the hopes of doubling up and putting themselves back in contention. Needless to say, within an hour of the bubble’s burst, an additional 100 players had hit the rail, including Brogdon.

During the next six hours of play, the pace of action picked up and the field was reduced by 540 players! Meaning from the start of the tournament one player had dropped every 90 seconds.

During Level 18, only 120 players remained, including Eric Mizrachi, JC Tran, Jonathan Aguiar, Dan Heimiller, and Lee Watkinson. It was at this point that the largest pot of the tournament up to that point occurred.

Adam White, who had only 9,000 an hour previous, managed to bring his stack up to 331,000. After a series of raises with Dug Ho, the money got all-in preflop creating a pot of 681,000. Ho held A-Q but was far behing White’s pocket aces. The board came 8 Q 5 [10s] 7 and  Ho was left staring blanklessly with mouth open which Mizrachi claimed was a “poker coma”.

As the end of the day drew near, even more players began to fall. Will Failla made it deep into Day 2 but finished just before the end of the night. Tran was another Day2 casualty finishing in 68th place for $8,062. All told, 710 players were eliminated on Day 2 of Event #4.

By the time the day ended, 50 players remained with an average chip stack of 360,720. This included the last woman standing, Amanda Baker, chip leader Robert Comegy with 1.25 million, and such recognizable names as Mizrachi, Heimiller, and Watkinson.

Players will return Tuesday at 1pm to play down to the final table, bringing them one step closer to the $771,106 first-place prize.

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