(Unnamed Player) Overwhelming Chip Leader WPTDS Paris as Money Stage is Reached

By Frank Op de Woerd

After seven levels of play, the World Poker Tour DeepStacks Paris Main Event is in the money! With Day 2a already wrapping up earlier, Day 2b got underway with 194 players looking for the final 56 to go to Day 3. In the end, qualifier Julien Kamoun was the last to go home empty-handed. Davidi Kitai made a deep run, but he too ultimately failed to cash.

(Unnamed Player) gathered a massive stack early on and never relented. Seemingly winning every other hand, (Unnamed Player) ended the day with 1.1 million – far ahead of all of the competition.

Here are the Top 5 stacks going into Day 3:

The second Day 2 started with players busting left and right. As is usual, many players survived their starting day well below average. While some doubled and made a run for it, numerous others busted early. “Seat Open!” was heard constantly as the dealers screamed their throats sore.

Among those to bust early, was Kalidou Sow. The 2018 WPTDS Portugal champion got crippled losing ace-king to queen-jack and lost the remainder with eight-seven to legendary French player Ange Besnainou.

French poker blogger Matthieu Sustrac (ace-jack versus ace-king,) Sergei Bagirov (jacks against ace-king,) and Saoudi Mimene all hit the rail well before the end of the day as well. The latter, Mimene, lost the majority of his stack in a monster pot with aces against the flopped set of Yucheng Liu, with the remainder going to Ismael Boujahma with ace-nine against ace-queen.

Two high-profile players doubled early with William Kassouf and Davidi Kitai, both getting it in good in one of the first levels. But both would come up short eventually, going out before the bagging and tagging started.

Kassouf doubled twice but never got into the role of big stack. Talkative as always – to some players’ enjoyment while others rolled their eyes – Kassouf eventually ran ace-queen into ace-king, an unavoidable situation given the stacks.

Triple Crown winner Davidi Kitai was one of the last players to go home empty-handed

Davidi Kitai hung around a bit longer, but the result was the same; no cash for the Belgian Triple Crown winner. Kitai, down to just a few big blinds and not in the big blind having committed most of his chips, performed a stop and go against Yucheng Liu, who had opened the button. Given the number of chips in the middle already, Liu wasn’t likely to fold to Kitai’s one-big bet push anyway, but with the kings he had, folding was the last option he would ever choose. Kitai had flopped a pair with his jack-deuce suited, so he had a chance, but blanks on the turn and river resulted in him going out on the soft bubble.

After Kitai’s departure, the tournament was hand-for-hand. The first hand of the slowed down play saw Marcin Wydrowski double with queens against tens pre-flop all in.

The next hand, it was all over. Julien Kamoun squeezed with pocket eights for his last ten big blinds and got called by ace-jack. The flop came jack-high, and no eight was seen on the turn or river. And just like that, the day was over with 56 players bagging and tagging while Kamoun did his walk of shame towards the rail.

The 56 players surviving Day 2b join the 51 Day 2a survivors for a combined field of 107 players on Day 3 on Sunday, March 1st at 3 pm. They’re all guaranteed the min-cash of €2,500, and they’re all eyeing the €200,000 first-place prize. With forty minutes and 39 seconds remaining in level 18 (3K/6K with a 6K big blind ante,) there’s plenty of play left so check back to WPT.com on Sunday for continued coverage of the WPTDS Paris Main Event, hosted by Club Pierre Charron.

Julien Kamoun’s pocket eights lost to Julien Breuil’s ace-jack to burst the bubble

All photos courtesy of Tomas Stacha