April 08 2012, Paul Oresteen

Day 1 of the World Series of Poker Circuit Horseshoe Council Bluffs Main Event kicked off with two starting flights on Saturday. On Day 1a, 192 players took to the felt and 96 advanced to Day 2. Day 1b began with 88 players, and 42 moved on to Monday’s day of play. Casey Cavanaugh has the overall chip lead with a staggering 196,700, which is 60,000 more than his closest competitor.

Action for Day 2 is scheduled to start on Monday, April 9 at 11:00 a.m. CDT. Normally Day 2 would begin on Sunday, but due to the Easter holiday, it was pushed back a day.

Chasing Cavanaugh are Leonel Contreras (137,300), Shaun McBride (126,300), Mark Kroon (114,600) and Matt Longcor (108,400).

Council Bluffs is usually a smaller stop on the WSOPC tour but a number of seasoned pros turned up for the event. Mark “P0ker H0” Kroon, Bernard Lee, Scott Clements, Dennis Phillips, Kevin Saul, Garry Gates, Allen Kessler, Chris Bell, Amanda Musumeci, Drazen Ilich and Doug “Rico” Carli all made the trip to Iowa and will be moving on to Day 2. Jacob Bazeley and Roland Isra also made the trip, but failed to advance to Day 2.

Cavanaugh won two key hands that gave him the chip lead. On one hand, he made a full house holding pocket sevens on a board when his opponent held pocket threes. He doubled to over 130,000 at the point and only few minutes later he knocked out two players in one hand and pushed his stack to over 170,000.

Top 10 Chip Counts

The remaining 138 players will have a day off on Sunday for the Easter holiday. Day 2 action will kick off promptly at 11 a.m. CDT on Monday, and will play down to the final nine players or through Level 23, whichever comes first. Follow all the WSOPC action live on Pokernews.com.

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January 30 2012, Cory Dowd

It was an action-packed Day 2 of the World Series of Poker Circuit $1,600 Main Event at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The day began with 133 players competing for a prize pool of $963,210, and more than half got paid when the money bubble burst at 72 on Sunday. The field was then trimmed down to 15 players after ten levels of play, with chip leader Nicholas Wilbur pacing the field with 1,541,000 chips.

Wilbur earned most of those chips when he got his all in preflop against the of Brandon Riha. In a pot worth more than 1.4 million chips, Wilbur managed to catch up on the river as the board ran out . After that, Wilbur used his big stack to chip up for the better part of a level and a half.

Wilbur’s run is especially impressive when you consider who is chasing him. Jeff Madsen, Dutch Boyd, Sean Getzwiller and Kevin Calenzo are still in contention with very healthy stacks. Madsen was one of the chip leaders throughout Day 2. However, he took a tough hit late when his was unable to catch up to the of Rellie Sigua. Madsen will return with 917,000 chips on Monday.

Boyd was also consistently chipping up throughout the day and then hit a one-outer on the river against Sam McGrath. Boyd’s luck didn’t last, though, as he was unable to fade the flush draw of Joe Kuether on the very last hand of play to finish with 726,000. Kuether, the Day 1a chip leader, is just shy of the chip lead entering the final day, holding 1,519,000.

Getzwiller bagged up 989,000 in large part due to his pocket jacks holding against the of Brandon Riha and the of short stack Mark Kroon late in the night. Calenzo, meanwhile, got most of his 695,000 chips toward the end of the day when he was dealt pocket aces against the pocket queens of Joshua Pollock.

Scott Clements, William Reynolds, Dan O’Brien and James Carroll were some of the unfortunate players who fell short of the money on Sunday. Andreas Hoivold, Kathy Liebert and Gavin Griffin all made the money, but all were eliminated before play ended.

Monday will bring the final day of the WSOPC Main Event at Caesars Palace. The final 15 will play down to a champion, and our Live Reporting Team will be providing updates all day long. Be sure to check in to find out who wins the WSOPC gold ring and the $197,451 top prize.

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