Ready for Day 2 at World Series of Poker Europe Main Event

After a somewhat small-ish turnout for the first day of the 2008 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event, stragglers swarmed the Empire Casino in London for the second of two Day 1 starting flights. By the time registration had closed, 203 players had ponied up the GBP 10,000 ($18,100 USD) buy-in, a big jump from the 159 who took part in Day 1A.

The 363 total players is one player more than the final number for last year's Main Event, the event that catapulted Annette "Annette_15" Obrestad into single-name-recognition status. Annette had a little stumble on Friday, when she fell to Doyle Brunson 2-0 in a heads-up battle labeled "King vs. Queen". Annette would return to the WSOPE felt on Sunday for her Day 1 flight.

The champ put up a fight, but perhaps the feature table draw of Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari and Marco Traniello got the best of her. After standing strong most of the day, Annette would take a hit after a rivered boat by Laak. She would commit the rest of her stack with K-K, only to fall to A-Q, ensuring a new champ in 2008.

The Betfair poster girl would have company on the rail, as her Team Betfair brother Sorel Mizzi would run big slick into a pair of aces. Also failing to bag chips at the end of the night were Gus Hansen, Allen Cunningham, Esfandiari, former Main Event winner Carlos Mortensen, two-time 2008 bracelet winner John Phan and 2008 WSOPE PLO winner Theo Jorgensen.

Most of the day belonged to the online phenoms, namely Jamie "Chronic420" Rosen. Rosen burst onto the live tournament scene during the 2008 WSOP, where he reached one final table and bubbled another. Thanks to an early felting he put on Jean Robert Bellande with a pair of cowboys, Rosen would sit atop the leaderboard for most of the day. Right on his tail was another online-stud coming off somewhat of a WSOP breakout. David "Raptor" Benefield earned over $160,000 for three nice cashes during the series and bagged the third largest chip stack at the end of the night. They will be joined in Day 2 by fellow online studs Yuval "yuvee04" Bronshtein and Brian "SBRugby" Townsend. Bronshtein finished the day in the top ten, while Townsend doubled with aces in the day's closing minutes to survive.

But at the end of the day, everyone was looking up to Daniel Negreanu. "Kid Poker" laid low while Rosen drove the chip counts, only to sweep in during the day's closing levels to grab the lead. Key reads and traps lead Negreanu to pick up larges pots on jacks full and a set of sixes in just a matter of hands. Those pots put Negreanu over the 100,000 mark and he never looked back. When the 97 Day 1B survivors return Monday to combine with the 86 who escaped Day 1A with chips, only Justin "BoostedJ" Smith will command a larger stack than the four-time bracelet winner. Smith, the Day 1A leader, will bring 158,925 with him for the second day of battle.

Here is the Day 2 Leaderboard, courtesy of www.worldseriesofpoker.com:

Day 2 of the WSOPE Main Event begins Monday at 1 p.m. BST (8 a.m. EST).

To read a Day 1A recap, click here.