Day 2 of the Borgata Poker Classic

Gavin Griffin Takes the Chip Lead

Day 2 of the World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Classic started with 313 players. Despite the slow moving blind structure, 214 players were eliminated during the seven scheduled levels. Only 54 players will walk out of the Borgata convention center with anything to show for their efforts, leaving the remaining 99 players far from the money.

While some players spent the day on a roller coaster ride up and down the leader board, others allowed the well-designed structure to dictate their pace, flying under the radar while they quietly amassed healthy stacks.

Noah “fourUhaters” Schwartz entered the day with a big stack of over 115,000 and over the course of a few levels chipped up huge to dwarf the rest of his table. He got a bit lucky in an early confrontation with Bill Kontaratos that doubled him up. Schwartz raised preflop with A-K and Kontaratos bumped it up. Schwartz called and both players got it all in on an A-K-Q rainbow flop. Schwartz thought his two pair was good, but Kontaratos turned over J-10 for the nuts. Luckily for the young online professional, he hit an ace on the turn to double up and take control of his table. “I had no idea that he had the nuts,” said Schwartz. “He reraised me preflop, so I can’t put him on J-10 in that spot.” Schwartz then vowed to play patient poker the rest of the day, and he kept his word, slowly chipping up and ending the day with 477,000.

Gavin Griffin used a confrontation with Ryan Young to propel his stack over 300,000. Then he flopped trip queens with A-Q to add another 100,000. Towards the end of the night, Griffin also made a push for the chip lead. He eventually took it away from Schwartz and finished the day with 563,000.

Joe Sebok started the day as he ended his night before, hitting cards and making moves to get his stack as high as 325,000. But just before dinner, a few coolers took a huge chunk out of his stack to bring him back to average. With about 30 minutes left in the day, Sebok pushed his pocket jacks into David Tran’s pocket kings and hit the rail.

Another player that jumped out early, but failed to survive the day was John Phan. The “Razor” climbed up and over the 300,000 mark just an hour into play, but took some tough beats before the start of the fifth level to put him in jeopardy. Shortly after the dinner break, Phan was all in and out, continuing a trend he has shown for building a stack early and failing to maintain it.

Other notables that did not survive the day included Victor Ramdin, Eugene Todd, Alex Jacob, J.C. Tran and Mike Matusow.

Play will continue tomorrow at 11 a.m. EDT and continue until only 27 players remain. Check back and keep up with all your favorite players, photos and chip counts from the event.

Here are the top five players and their chip counts:

1. Gavin Griffin – 563,000

2. Noah Schwartz – 477,000

3. Rep Porter – 421,500

4. David Tran – 411,600

5. Justin Bonomo – 377,400

News Added: 29 January, 2008

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