Two players came back for the heads-up battle in the $10,000 Shorthanded NLHE Championship and they needed just one hand to finish things. Keith Lehr 3-bet and called Gregory Merson’s shove with K9s and was up against AQo and though the flop helped him, a Q on the turn sealed his fate. Merson win’s the bracelet and a staggering $1.136M for his victory.

The other event to play down to a winner today was the $3,000 Pot Limit Omaha hi/lo. Roch Cousineau, Viacheslav Zhukov, and Chris Bell couldn’t get things finished yesterday so they came back to decide who gets the bracelet and the $330,277 first place money today. Bell, who was the short stack was first out today after coming from a pretty big chip deficit, Zhukov overturned Cousineau to win in the end when his A25J scooped against AAT9. Cousineau has made the final 3 twice this year but come up short on both occasions.

In the final $1,000 NLHE of the year, the massive field of 4620 has been whittled down to just 51 players. Alex Corderdo on 822k and Franklin Johnson on 789k have a huge lead on the field with their nearest rival at 593k, with the blinds going to 5k/10k when play resumes at 1 pm tomorrow. Cordero was the overall chip leader after both day 1s were complete and it was quite a feat to hold the lead in the huge field. Jake Cody who also went well on day 1 will be coming bakc with 302,000.

In the $10,000 2-7 Single Draw Championship, 10 players remain from the 54 that started today. Amazingly, John Juanda is in a great position to defend his title, sitting second in chips behind Ashton Griffin. Nick Shulman sits 3rd in chips with Andy Bloch the short stack. Daniel Negreanu, Marco Traniello, Jason Mercier, and Eric Seidel all made the money but were eliminated towards the end of play today. There’s $294,321 on offer to the winner and they’re back at 1 pm to figure out who it’s going to be.

Finally for today, the WSOP National Championship got underway. The event is open to players who have won a WSOP circuit event or are in the WSOP Top 100 in the player rankings. In total 157 turned out for the event and at the end of play Brian Rast is at the top of the heap with Elky close behind. There are 39 players left at the end of play there’s a huge$ 416,051 on offer to the winner; not bad for topping a 157 player field.

Tomorrow, it’s the big one; day 1a of the Main Event kicks off at 12 pm. Stay with us for updates throughout the Main Event!

Author Profile: Rob O’Connor+

written by Rob \\ tags: Day 40, Gregory Merson, Main Event, Shorthanded NLHE Championship, World Series of Poker, WSOP