Artur Martirosian leads WPT World Championships Main Event with 24 Left

Day 2 of the World Poker Tour’s World Online Championships Main Event saw 156 players reduced to just 24 as the Russian professional Artur Martirosian once again flexed his poker prowess at the expense of the opposition.

With a massive $10.1 million prizepool in place, Martirosian took full control of Day 2 as he bullied his way up to 30 million chips to take the chip lead with the final day on the horizon.

Play got under way with 156 players, but only 136 of them would make the money. Plenty of big names missed out on profit, with GPI end boss Alex Foxen and Christian Jeppsson both busting before the bubble burst. When it did, the last player to leave without cashing out a return was Ioannis Angelou-Konstas, and he preceded a flurry of min-cashes and double-ups.

Among those to crash out early but with a five-figure sum going into their partypoker accounts were Team partypoker’s Jason Koon (131st for $23,253), Jake Schindler (130th for $23,253), and Anton Wigg (123rd for $23,253).

As the field shrunk below 100 players, the eliminations came thick and fast, with Team partypoker ambassadors Philipp Gruissem (97th for $27,297) and Isaac Haxton (93rd – $27,297) each missing out on a deep run. Timothy Adams (81st for $29,319), Parker Talbot (75th for $31,341), Shaun Deeb (65th for $33,363), Dominik Panka (45th for $39,429) and one of the biggest winners this week thanks to his WCOOP heroics, Niklas Astedt, (28th for $45,495) all made way before the day’s close.

When the dust settled on Day 2, Martirosian had a massive lead, with his pile of 30,030,334 chips easily dwarfing every other stack. Martirosian’s nearest challenger at the close of play was Bert ‘girafganger7’ Stevens, who, with 18,827,588 chips will be thinking that there is a lot of poker still to play. Dutch player Teun Mulder (17,374,921) took the other podium place to give themselves real hope of winning the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup.

Martirosian’s poker skills have long been recognized as some of the best in the world. Earlier in this series, he took home over $53,000 for finishing 6th in the WPT World Online Championships Knockout Championship on partypoker.

Artur Martirosian takes home over $53,000 (including bounties) for his 6th place finish in the #WPTWOC Knockout Championship. Only 5 remain, can @swordfish007 close it out? Find out on https://t.co/E5kBpU4h8Y. pic.twitter.com/GLAraZAAgP

— PartyPoker (@partypoker) August 18, 2020

Not that Martirosian will have it all his own way. As well as Stevens and Mulder, there will be 21 other combatants trying to stop the Russian claiming the $1,715,667 top prize which will be handed out in two days’ time. The penultimate day of action kicks off later tonight, at 8.00pm CET, and will feature players such as former chip leader Benjamin Rolle (11,129,9120 and German High Roller crusher Ole Schemion (9,468,034) Day 2’s chip leader Blaz Zerjav survived the day too, albeit with the slightly lower-ranked stack of 7,600,081. 

Play will go from 24 players to a final table of just nine players on Day 3, with Martirosian leading the race for a final table seat. Can he make it in the same shape as chips leader? We’ll find out very soon right here on Calvin Ayre.

WPT World Online Championships Main Event Top 10 Chipcounts: