2015 WSOP Day 44: David Jackson Leads the Day 2c Pack; Ryan Riess Among the Big Stacks
Day 44 of the 2015 World Series of Poker saw 2,747 players return on Day 2c of the 2015 WSOP Main Event. After five levels of play, just 1,142 survived to make it to Day 3. Along with the 654 survivors from Day 2a/b, a total of 1,796 players will be back and spread across the Amazon, Brasilia and Miranda Rooms as the quest toward making the money gets underway on Day 3.
Bagging the biggest stack on Day 2c was David Jackson with 408,800, putting him in fifth place overall. Here are the top 10 chip counts from the Day 2c session:
Top 10 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Chips |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | David Jackson | 408,800 |
| 2 | Zach Jiganti | 401,900 |
| 3 | Shawn Van Asdale | 388,000 |
| 4 | Jens Lakemeier | 360,000 |
| 5 | Hugo Perez | 345,300 |
| 6 | Louis Salter | 344,400 |
| 7 | Justin Schwartz | 320,900 |
| 8 | Salvatore Dicarlo | 312,200 |
| 9 | Ville Mattila | 310,000 |
| 10 | Hans Joaquim Hein | 308,800 |
Others to bag big stacks include Matt Glantz (306,000), Matt Jarvis (304,000), 2013 WSOP Main Event Champion Ryan Riess (291,700), Mark Kroon (279,900) and Craig Varnell (274,200). When play wrapped up, we caught up with a few of them.
Riess: "I made a lot of very good hands. I used a lot of pot control and I think I only three-bet three or four times all day. I kept the pots as small as possible because I feel in this tournament people inflate the pots too big. I tried not to blow up, because you can't win the tournament on Day 2. In 2013, I think I bagged 158,000 or so [on Day 2]. So, I have almost double that this year. I'm ahead of pace to do what I did two years ago, so hopefully I can continue that."
Kroon has been in a similar position before, having held the chip lead at the start of Day 3 in the 2013 WSOP Main Event. Last time around, the aggressive Kroon failed to find a different gear and gave back that lead early on. This time he's hoping things will turn out much differently.
"Hopefully I learned my lesson," he said. "The thing about what happened last time is I think I just got too overconfident. I'd never really been in that big of a spotlight in this big of a tournament. I got so many chips just running people over and it just got away from me. I felt so bad about having that opportunity and blowing it. I'm not going to do what I did last time. There was just no reason to do what I did. I think the spotlight got to me."
As for Varnell, five months ago he was dropped by his backer and he came into the 2015 WSOP feeling like this was his final stand as a poker player. Things have gone relatively well from there. He final tabled the $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em WSOP.com Online Event finishing third for $73,079. A few days later he managed to outlast a field of 5,113 to win the 2015 partypoker presents: WPT500 at ARIA Resort & Casino for $330,000 and going into Day 3 on Friday, he is brimming with confidence.
"I feel like I'm playing really good right now," Varnell said. "I feel pretty confident and I've got people guessing. I've been implementing a lot of other people's games into my own these days and I feel like when you're mixing it up like that people just have no idea what you're doing. It feel really good just to be confident and playing well."
Varnell will head into Day 3 just looking to adjust to his table.
"I'm going to play my game and feel out the table first," Varnell said. "If there's a lot of weaker spots at the table I attack. You've just got to hop on it and take their chips."
Other big names to survive the day include 1998 Main Event champion Scotty Nguyen (181,200), Daniel Negreanu (123,600) and 1989 WSOP Main Event champion Phil Hellmuth (88,800).
Speaking of past Main Event champions, Jamie Gold, Robert Varkonyi, Peter Eastgate and Huck Seed each busted out during Day 2c. Others who joined them on the rail include Ray Ramano, Ivan Demidov, Darryll Fish, Michael Mizrachi, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Matt Stout, Keven Stammen, Phil Ivey and Anthony Zinno.
Day 3 gets underway at noon local time on Friday where it is likely that play reaches the money.
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