WSOP Event #48: Brandon Cantu Dominates Day Two

Out of the initial 762 players, only 87 players returned for the second day of the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha-8 Event and while a lot of big names had already taken their leave on the first day of the tournament, Phil Hellmuth and Brandon Cantu were amongst those to come back for more and fight it out for a seat on the final table.

Both of them made it to the very end of the day, but they took a very different road. Brandon Cantu could build on his big chip stack and eliminated one opponent right at the start, while Phil Hellmuth was walking a fine line between short stack and small ball poker.

Hand-for-hand play finally came to an end when Carlo Citrone's AQ42 couldn't catch against the opposing AK99 and he became the unfortunate bubble boy. Everyone else had a guaranteed cash of $2,953 at that point, but seeing how most players were looking for more, the play didn't loosen up too much.

Phil Hellmuth was finally eliminated on 14th place, after a lot of good lay-downs and well-played pots. In his final hand, two players called his pre-flop all-in. When the board read 54QA on the turn, one of them started betting out and with his T432 for a straight, he had Helllmuth drawing to a heart flush to stay alive - the flush didn't hit and Hellmuth made yet another disappointed exit to the rails.

On the top of the ranking, there was just no stopping Brandon Cantu. In at notable hand, there was a three-way all-in between Howard Andrew's AA58, Perry Friedman's AJT3 and Cantu's QQ42. The flop came down Q38 to give Cantu the leading set of queens, but the 9 on the turn improved Friedman to the nut-straight. Cantu could however make the nut-low, so the pot was chopped between those two and Andrew's rivered set of aces didn't change a thing as he had to take his leave.

Brandon Cantu came back for Perry Friedman's chips, however, when they got it all-in on a ten-high flop. Cantu's pocket aces were good enough to take down Friedman's pocket queens and when turn and river blanked, Friedman had to take his leave.

Cantu's next victim came in the form of Ray Bonavida, who ran his A553 into Cantu's AA32 and couldn't catch the saving cards - then, Cantu's aces held up once more when he sent Noah Boeken to the rails with AA73 against AKKJ. The situation was reversed when his KK43 was up against Jeff King's AAK5, but Cantu's hot streak just continued relentlessly when the case king was revealed on the turn.

With over a million of the approximately 3.5 million chips in play, he had collected almost a third of all chips with a whole 21 players left in play - and he managed to hold on to that lead over the remainder of the day, entering the final table as the clear chip leader.

World Series Of Poker Event #48 Standings
Rank	Name	Chips
1st	Brandon Cantu	1,020,000
2nd	Jacqmin Mathieu	520,000
3rd	Lee Watkinson	410,000
4th	Aaron Sias	360,000
5th	Steve Jelinek	280,000
6th	William McMahan	268,000
7th	Tommy Vedes	202,000
8th	Ted Weinstock	130,000
9th	Ronnie Hofman	102,000