The WSOP 2019 is now on its last stretch and yesterday saw Day 2 of its Event #82: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Double Stack where a total of 357 players had returned to the Amazon Room at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino. Among the returning players, there were six Indian players, namely Kalyan Chakravarthy (1,174,000 – 73 big blinds), Karan Radia (778,000), Himmat Singh (726,000), Kunal Punjwani (705,000), Goonjan Mall (266,000) and Sachidananda Sivakumar (102,000).
Day 2 of the event began on July 13 with all the 357 survivors returning to battle it out for the top prize of $530,164 (INR 3.63 Crores) and the coveted gold bracelet. Eliminations were quick on the day and by Level 35, the field came down to the 9-handed final table after Hye Park was eliminated in 10th place for $34,138 in prize. Park had Ah 10h, which lost to pocket queens of Tom Koral.
From Team India, only two players – Kalyan Chakravarthy (12.5 Million) and Kunal Punjwani (10.4 Million) made it to the final table. The latter, who earlier at the series finished 468th for $2,400 in the Little One for One Drop, eliminated Pablo Fernandez in the 9th place for $43,847 and took his stack to the 4th largest stack among the remaining 8 players. Pablo Fernandez had jammed with K3 and got a call from Punjwani with pocket threes, which held up. Following the 9th place elimination, play was halted for the day. Chakravarthy ended as the shortest stack among the final 8 with 9,925,000.
Each of the remaining players is guaranteed a minimum $56,850 (INR 39 Lac), while the top prize is $530,164. Leading the way is Freek Scholten and he holds a massive stack of 26,000,000 in chips.
So, there are now only two Indians keeping India’s bracelet hope alive. Both of them posses the talent and skills to stack up and win the bracelet for India. While Punjwani looks in a good shape to march on to the victory, Chakravarthy, who lost a few pots towards the latter stage of the day, is the shortest stack among the remaining 8. However, he is quite a beast and just last year, he had won the Venetian DCPS Monster Stack $750K GTD for INR 1.01 Crores and WPT India High Roller.
As mentioned above, a total of 6 Indians had come into Day 2 of the event but four of them exited before the end of day’s play. The first to exit among them Sachidananda Sivakumar (253rd for $2,911). The next to go was Karan Radia (209th for $2,911). The third Indian to exit on Day 2 was Himmat Singh and he finished in 120th place for $3,654. The last Indian challenger to exit was Goonjan Mall who exited in 19th place for $17,063, after his Queens lost to AK of Pablo Fernandez.
Final 8 Chip Counts:
- Freek Scholten – 26,000,000
- Darren Rabinowitz – 20,050,000
- Barry Shulman – 18,450,000
- Kunal Punjwani – 15,500,000
- Adam Hendrix – 15,350,000
- Philip Scaletta – 13,575,000
- Tom Koral – 10,550,000
- Kalyan Chakravarthy – 9,925,000
