Clonie Gowen’s Day 2 was short and less than sweet. Gowen pushed all in preflop with
and ran into pocket kings. No ace appeared on the board, and she was eliminated early. Joe Hachem went to the rail early when he got into a big hand with Peter Ling. Hachem raised from the button, and Ling defended his big blind. The board came down 7-3-3 with two spades, and Ling bet out. Hachem raised, Ling moved all in over the top, and Hachem called with 5-3 for trips. Ling revealed , but caught a runner-runner four-flush to eliminate the world champ. Other early eliminations included JJ Liu, Ari ‘BodogAri’ Engel and Graeme ‘Kiwi G’ Putt.

Team Full Tilt had a rough run in the middle of Day 2, with several of their players hitting the rail in a short span. Howard Lederer came to the Aussie Millions and immediately won over a million dollars by capturing the top prize in the $100,000-buyin Event #9 earlier in the series. Lederer’s luck ran out when Raymond Rahme outflopped him with A-9 to Lederer’s A-K to eliminate poker’s ‘Professor’. John Juanda was the next Full Tilt pro to bust when he ran pocket fives into Kofi Farye’s pocket tens and failed to improve.

Phil Ivey’s day ended when he got it all in with Richard Teatum on a board of . Teatum led out, and Ivey raised. Teatum went all in over the top with , and Ivey called with . No ace appeared for Ivey, and he was eliminated. More notable Day 2 exits included Michael Binger, cricket star Shane Warne, Jon ‘Pearljammer’ Turner, Tony G and Allen Cunningham.

Mike ‘The Mouth’ Matusow played tight all day until he made a key double-up late in the action. After complaining earlier about his lack of quality cards, Matusow doubled up with pocket aces against pocket queens to finish the day with a decent chip stack. Matthew LaGarde finished the day with the chip lead among the final 98 players, in sight of the money bubble of 80, as the top ten chip counts looked like this:

Matthew LaGarde – 490,000
Alexander Kostritsyn – 445,000
Dale Townsend – 420,000
Dusan Stoevski – 410,000
Kevin ‘BeLOWaBOVe’ Saul – 400,000
Con Angelakis – 376,000
Erik Seidel – 330,000
Adriano Cendron – 280,000
Jason Potter – 279,600
Andy Black – 271,000

Other notable survivors of Day 2 included Kenna James, Erick Lindgren, Max Pescatori and Jeff Lisandro.

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The 2008 COPC features five events and a total prize pool projected to exceed $1.3 million, with the $5,000-buyin Main Event (which starts on March 6) unique in that it’s a heads-up format, limited to 128 players, unlike the large-field freezeouts that mark most other poker gatherings. The complete schedule of events is as follows; all are no-limit hold’em variants:

Date Event

3-5 $500 Freezeout Charity Event
3-6 $5,000 Main Event (Day 1) —
Heads-Up, 128-player max
3-7 $1,500 Short-Handed (6-player tables)
3-8 $1,000 Freezeout
3-9 $500 Freezeout

The first day’s charity event is capped at 250 players, with a portion of the proceeds donated to breast-cancer research. The main event is expected to be filmed for later broadcast, and the last COPC drew a good selection of well-known players, including Antonio Esfandiari, Andy Bloch, Nenad Medic, Huck Seed, and Canadian stars Greg ‘FBT’ Mueller and Brad ‘Yukon’ Booth.

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