BLOCH AND OTHERS GO FOR SECOND 2012 BRACELET IN $50K EVENT
Poker is a streaky affair. Players can make few changes to their game play, but a run of cards or the boost of confidence that comes with a recent victory can be the difference between a multi-bracelet summer and a cashless seven weeks at the Rio.
 
A glance at the leaderboard after two days of play in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship only goes to show you that in poker, success often breeds success. Three of the top five big stacks have already won a gold bracelet this summer, and now only 56 players stand between them and one of the biggest final tables of the year. A second bracelet would be icing on the cake for chip leader Andy Bloch, who bagged up 687,000, but it would also be a fitting conclusion to his winning summer to prevail in the same event where he came up just short, losing to Chip Reese heads-up back in 2006.
 
For John Monnette, who is currently third in chips, a win in this event would be the score that secures his standing as the frontrunner in the WSOP Player of the Year race. Don't discount the current leader in the POY race though, as Phil Ivey is still alive in this event as well.
 
Ivey, Monnette, and Bloch are three of the 62 players who will return on Tuesday for Day 3 action.  While Day 1 only saw David Singer hit the rail, Monday plowed through the field, as around 40% of the 108 total entrants headed for the exit. The field size is down from last year's 128 players, but up substantially from the last time the $50,000 event was not part of ESPN's television coverage of the WSOP.  The top prize is still going to be the biggest outside of the Big One for One Drop and the Main Event, with the champion taking home the gold bracelet and $1,451,527.
 
The long list of casualties include past champion David Bach, Daniel Negreanu, Scott Seiver, Mike Matusow, Nick Schulman, Mike Sexton, Frank Kassela, John Juanda, Eugene Katchalov, Jonathan Duhamel, and Nikolai Yakovenko, whose exit from the tournament came in the most dramatic hand of the WSOP thus far.
 
In a pot that took almost thirty minutes to sort out, Yakovenko, Shaun Deeb, and Abe Mosseri clashed in a three-way all-in that was not actually an all-in. There was some confusion between the dealer and the players about whether or not Yakovenko was all-in preflop, and when all three players in the hand tabled their holdings and a board ran out, the ultimate ruling was that, even though Yakovenko had not moved all-in, the agreed upon action was an all-in since all players in the hand tabled their holdings without stopping the action.  The full details of the hand are available in the live updates from the event.
 
Day 3 action commences at 2pm PT on Wednesday.  For full chip counts and up to the minute action from Day 3, please check out WSOP.com.
 
Here are the top ten chip counts from the end of Day 2:
 
1. Andy Bloch - 687,000
2. Abe Mosseri - 633,100
3. John Monnette - 563,000
4. Michael Mizrachi - 563,000
5. Joe Cassidy - 542,300
6. Robert Mizrachi - 500,200
7. Daniel Alaei - 488,700
8. Jonathan Spinks - 473,900
9. Dan Shak - 461,400
10. John Hennigan - 460,300 
 
Here are the eliminated players and their finishing position through Day 2 of the $50,000 Poker Players Championship:
 
63. Rami Boukai
64. Matthew Russell
65. Hasan Habib
66. Nikolai Yakovenko
67. Daniel Negreanu
68. Jared Bleznick
69. Jonathan Duhamel
70. David Steicke
71. Ville Wahlbeck
72. Marco Johnson
73. Andrew Robl
74. Eric Cloutier
75. Andrew Brown
76. David Bakes Baker
77. Jesse Martin
78. Chris Lee
79. David Bach
80. Gus Hansen
81. John Juanda
82. Allen Cunningham
83. Eric Rodawig
84. Hoi Cheung
85. Eugene Katchalov
86. Jon Turner
87. Todd Brunson
88. Cory Zeidman
89. Josh Arieh
90. Vladimir Shchmelev
91. Mike Matusow
92. Owais Ahmed
93. Nick Schulman
94. Bryn Kenney
95. Cary Katz
96. Frank Kassela
97. Naoya Kihara
98. Arturo Diaz
99. George Lind
100. Bertrand Grospellier
101. Anton Allemann
102. Mike Sexton
103. Shawn Buchanan
104. Scott Seiver
105. Stephen Mack
106. Lee Goldman
107. Justin Bonomo
108. David Singer
 
Photo by Joe Giron for PokerNews/WSOP