After working only one day of the Stud Hi/Lo World Championship I was thrown over to day two of Event 36 – $2,000 No Limit Hold’em.

213 players returned for day two action, but when the chips were bagged and tagged at the end of the day we would still have seventeen; including two woman (not having a go at how woman suck at poker or anything – but this was the first chance of the series to see a woman make the final table).

The day pretty much ran out like a regular donkament with no real notables making it through. I sweated David ‘Chino’ Rheem for a while, and was able to see him play a few interesting hands before being eliminated in 80th place.

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Day Three followed the normal pattern of returning with more then one table before battling it down to the final nine before moving to one of the feature tables.

It took just over three hours to reach the final nine with it being one of the most evenly stacked final tables of all time as seven of the players held between a 40-50 big blind stack. Two women also snuck through making it the first WSOP final table of 2009 (ignoring the Ladies Championship) to have a female representative in both Laurence Grondin and Almira Skripchenko holding their head high.

Laurence Grondin and Almira Skripchenko
Laurence Grondin and Almira Skripchenko chalk one up for the girls!

Skripchenko would fall in seventh, but Grondin would capture the chip lead and play great poker to eventually exit in third place. Jordan Smith would battle for two hours with Ken Lennaard before his 9♦ 7♦ would flop a flush and hold as he took home a new gold bracelet and $586,212 in prizemoney.

Tomorrow it’s shootout time!