Johnson Leads Field; Mueller Attempting to One-Up Last Year's Finish
After 10 levels of play, Marco Johnson leads the Day 2 field of Event #8: $2,500 Eight-Game Mix after he bagged 354,300. A mere 19 players remain out of the 192 that started the day, and Johnson stayed among the leaders for most of the day.
One of the survivors is Greg "FBT" Mueller, who is gunning for nothing less than the championship after finishing second in this event to David "ODB" Baker for $167,637 last year. Mueller currently ranks fifth in chips with 258,200. He trails Johnson, Steven Wolansky (321,400), Chris Tryba (287,800) and Dario Alioto (261,400). Other notable remaining players include Robert Mizrachi (157,000), Day 1 chipleader Eric Crain (117,700) and former main event third-place finisher Josh Arieh (101,600).
It seemed that Mueller was on a downward spiral after Crain dealt Mueller a huge blow late in the night during the No-Limit Hold'em round when he made quad jacks after shoving preflop with jack-eight. Mueller managed to battle back to a top-five stack despite the setback.
Greg Raymer, who came into the day with a very short stack, hit the rail early on, and a slew of top pros from the loaded field joined him. They included Phil Ivey, Allen Kessler, David Williams, Todd Brunson, Scott Fischman, Justin Bonomo and Vanessa Selbst among others.
Play resumes at 2 p.m. PST tomorrow, and we will continue to update you as the players are whittled down to a champion, who will earn $225,104 and a coveted gold bracelet.