Marc McLaughlin Leads Day 2 of bwin WPT Prague

Day 2 of the bwin World Poker Tour (WPT) has reached its conclusion and Marc Etienne McLaughlin leads the final 63-players with 410,800 chips after snatching the chip lead from Kara Scott in dramatic fashion in one of the final hands of the night.

The name of PartyPoker Ambassador was already written in all of the poker news headlines, before McLaughlin got involved in a controversial tussle with last year’s runner up Alexander Lahkov.

It was a three-bet pot with Mclaughlin flopping a set of sixes on [9c] [7c] [6d], and when the [Ks] arrived on fourth-street, Lahkov moved all-in holding [Kd] [Qd] and was left drawing dead when the former November Niner called. When Lahkov saw the hand of the Canadian he pushed his chips into the middle of the table with so much force that some of them ended up in a short stacks area.

The floor was called, the mess was sorted out, an apologetic Lahkov left, McLaughlin picked up over 400,000 chips and the name of Kara Scott was relegated to second instead of first.

With 375,100 chips in the bag, Kara Scott isn’t going to be worrying about any of that old nonsense. It was a wonderful day’s work for a player who has gone deep in most of the tournaments she has played this year, and she picked up the large majority of them when she flopped the second nut flush, at the same time Micha Hoedemaker had flopped middle set. Those scenarios always end up with a bad beat story and it was Hoedemaker who was doing the bleating after the turn and river bricked to give Scott the chip lead at that time.

Contrasting fortunes for our WPT Champions Club members.

Former WPT Baden winner, Vladimir Bozinovic got it all in with a jack high flush against a player holding trips, and then had to sit in abject misery as the river paired the board to leave the flush useless. That hand left Bozinovic with just 10bb and he would lose them in a flip JJ v AA.

Two-time WPT champion Marvin Rettenmaier was the next WPT Champion to walk into the cold afternoon chill when he lost a flip against the Russian machine Andrey Shatilov. That hand would act as a spring board for Shatilov who would play his poker within the clouds of the chip lead for most of the day, and would end with 366,600 chips – good enough for third.

Giacomo Fundaro was nearly a two-time WPT champion when he finished as the runner-up to Tony Dunst at WPT Caribbean just a few weeks ago, but he won’t be repeating that feat in this tournament after being eliminated by the reigning champion Marcin Wydrowski when he moved all-in holding [Ad] [4d] and Wydrowski called with [Ks] [9s] – hitting a nine on the turn. Wydrowski would finish on 211,100 chips and reacted by saying, "come and see me in three days," when a member of the media asked him if he was going to back-to-back.

The final WPT champions club member to exit stage left was Will ‘The Thrill’ Failla who lost a flip to the Day 1A chip leader Vasili Firsau AQ<JJ; the WPT Grand Prix de Paris runner-up finishing the day with 284,500 chips.

Three WPT Champions Club members did make it through to Day 3. We have already mentioned Wydrowski, and joining him was Roberto Romanello (209,000) and Chanracy Khun (75,600). Romanello eliminated the Day 1C chip leader Kuljinder Sidhu in a flip AK>QQ to set him on his way, and Khun grinded it out without ever really threatening at the top of the charts.

35 last minute entrants took the player pool up to 306, and that created a total prize pool of €881,555, of which €206,230 will be reserved for the player who cricks their back when he, or she, tries to lift that huge trophy off the table.

But as Wydrowski says, that’s three days way yet, and there is a whole lot of poker to be played before that.

Day 3 of this wonderful tournament will once again commence at 14:00 (local time) and we will be here present and correct from the first hand to the very last and we urge you to join us.