The second day of a UKIPT is always the one that shapes the tournament as around 80% of the players who navigate their way through Day 1 fail to make Day 3. By the end of play a stack that would've been good for the Day 1 chip lead is about 50% of the average Day 3 stack. So it's not surprising that often the end of Day 2 chip leader wasn't even 'on the radar' at the start of day.
And so it proved today as Jon Lundy had a Super Saturday to lead the remaining field of 36 with a stack of 771,000. The 26-year-old Geordie is known within the poker community as one of the true grinders and puts many a full-time players volume to shame. "I relocated to Edinburgh in August to take a job in the poker industry, but still manage to put in 100,000 hands a month playing 16 tables of cash at the same time."
Today he showed that he wasn't too shabby when just playing one table, Lundy had come into the day with 83,300 and was in 16th chip position. However, he didn't get off to the best start as he was drawn on the same table as Dermot Blain, Dean Lyall and soon had Dominik Nitsche for company. "It was impossible, it was a super tough table, " he told the PokerStars Blog. "Fortunately I moved tables as I was the next big blind, that was a lucky break."
Halfway through the day he was still struggling though as he was in 60th place of the 85 remaining players. "I managed to chip up on the bubble to 180,000," said Lundy but his second lucky break wouldn't come until 15 minutes from the end of play. In a five-bet all-in pre-flop pot Lundy clashed with Patrick Weifels, who was the second biggest stack at his table. They both had ace-king but crucially Lundy had the ace of spades, four spades on board saw him win a monster pot and send Weifels to the rail.
He wasn't the only one to perform the chip trick of exponentially growing your stack on Day 2 but he has a big chip lead from Ondrej Drozd (425,000), Ben Glanton (375,000), Michael Kane (363,000) and David Stonehouse (365,000) who round out the top five.
Players of the caliber of: Timothy Finne (205,000), Sam Grafton (163,000), Tom Hall (113,000), James Williams (109,000), Nicolas Cardyn (95,000) and Andrew Teng (93,000) might not have big stacks but they are all still in the mix.
As for Team PokerStars, both Mickey Petersen and Liv Boeree were in action today and they'll both be in action tomorrow.
For Boeree, who came in fifth in chips, you suspected her competitiveness would mean she'd be downbeat with a day that saw her start with 115,000 and end with 150,000. But after a buoyant last level in which she busted Neil Raine she was in high spirits. "I'm really happy, I was card dead the entire day and missed a bunch of flush draws," she told the Blog. "I'm super happy I was hanging in there and now I have a playable stack."
As we saw last year when Nicolau Villa-Lobos went from worst to first at the final table whilst you're still in, you've still got a shot.
As for Petersen, his day seemed to progress more smoothly, even if he never reached the heights of Boeree, he was, until the end at least also spared the lows. Nonetheless, he'll be coming back for his third UKIPT Day 3 in a row tomorrow. He finished 32nd in Isle of Man and 36th in Nottingham. Having already equaled his performance in Nottingham he'll be hoping his 99,000 will carry him further tomorrow. That stack equates to around 15 big blinds, the perfect stack for an 'online' player surely?
One of the headlines on any Day 2 of the UKIPT is the bubble. We reached that stage late in level 14 - the sixth level of the day - Adam Picken, Thomas Galloway and Ciaran Heaney all doubled up on the bubble before Carl Falconer became the 64th place finisher. His 3.5 big blind shove with [Ad][6s] was called by Ashiq Abdullah with [3h][2h]. A three on the river sent Falconer home empty handed.
They say there's a curse of the chip leader in poker tournaments, in that the player who leads after Day 1 never goes on to win the tournament. It struck again in Edinburgh, Day 1B chip leader David Vamplew endured a torrid time of it today and was out before the money kicked in. Whilst Day 1A top dog Leon Louis fared a little better before getting knocked in 51st place, good for £2,230.
Part of the problem for Vamplew today was that he found himself on two tough tables, however some of his toughest opponents that he faced today suffered the same fate as he did: Steve O'Dywer, Dominik Nitsche and Dermot Blain were a trio of top players to be left potless. Whilst elsewhere Ben Jenkins, Dara O'Kearney, Richard Evans, Emmett Mullin, Keith Hawkins, Dave Shallow, Martins Adeniya and Julian Thew also busted before the money.
Whilst Neil Raine (37th, £2,570), Caicai Huang (42nd, £2,230), David Lappin (44th, £2,230), Tom Ward (45th, £2,230), Nicholas Newport (54th, £2,230) and Dean Lyall (55th, £2,230) all cashed but crashed out before the end of the day.
That's all from us on Day 2, to catch up on all of today's action, or to see the overnight chips counts, the payouts so far and tomorrow's seat draw click on the links below:
Levels 9-12
Levels 13-16
Chip counts
Payouts
Seat Draw
All photos are copyright of Rene Velli