Artur Martirosian Leads Final 24 of the WPTWOC Main Event

Day 2 of the 2020 WPT World Online Championships Main Event started with 156 players in the hunt for the massive $1,715,667 top prize and only 24 of those hopefuls still have a chance of becoming the latest partypoker millionaire.

Artur Martirosian excelled on Day 2 and bagged up a tournament-leading stack of more than 30 million chips, over 11 million more chips than anyone else in the field.

WPT Main Event Championship Day 2 Top 10 Chip Counts

Place	Player	Country	Chips
1	Artur Martirosian	Russia	30,030,344
2	Bert Stevens	United Kingdom	18,827,588
3	Teun Mulder	Netherlands	17,374,921
4	Pieter Aerts	Belgium	14,105,891
5	Akseli Paalanen	Finland	12,300,834
6	Benjamin Rolle	Austria	11,129,912
7	Diogo Cuellar	Peru	11,037,070
8	Ole Schemion	Austria	9,468,034
9	Blaz Zerjav	Slovenia	7,600,081
10	Viktor Kudinov	Russia	7,256,874

The money bubble burst when Ioannis Angelou-Konstas crashed out in 137th place. Team partypoker’s Isaac Haxton was one of the shortest stacks during the bubble period but he managed to climb to 93rd place and bank $27,297.

Some of the most recognisable names in the industry also saw a return on their $10,300 investment. These included Team parypoker’s Jason Koon (131st – $23,253) and Philipp Gruissem (97th – $27,297), Anton Wigg (122nd – $23,253), and Sami Kelopruo (84th – $29,319).

Timothy Adams (81st – $29,319), Shaun Deeb (65th – $33,363), Ali Imsirovic (46th – $39,429), Niklas Astedt (28th – $45,495), and Dimitar Danchev (25th – $45,495) also racked up a cash.

Martirosian Leads Two Dozen Stars Back Into Battle

Artur Martirosian is the man in pole position going into the penultimate day’s play. The Russian returns to the action armed with 30,030,334 chips, almost twice as many as his nearest rival Bert Stevens on 18,827,588. Stevens is better-known in the online poker world as the legendary “girafganger7”

Martirosian is a permanent fixture in online poker’s biggest, most-prestigious tournaments, so it’s no surprise to see him at the business end of the WPTWOC Main Event.

He may be the one to catch but Martirosian is wily enough to know he won’t have matters his own way. The aforementioned Stevens hasn’t accumulated almost 19 million chips by chance alone and will be doing everything in his power to reach the nine-handed final table.

The likes of Teun Mulder (17,374,921) and Benjamin Rolle (11,129,912) have top 10 stacks at the restart and these two players know their way around a tournament table. As does Ole Schemion (9,468,034) who sits back down with enough chips for eight-place when play resumes.

Don’t write off the chances of Blaz Zerjav who was the chip leader going into Day 2. He’s currently in ninth-place, while Team partypoker’s Dzmitry Urbanovich, fresh from a runner-up finish in the $5,200 WPT Big Game, finds himself in 12th place with 5,951,864 chips.

Further down the chip counts you find such luminaries as Phil Mighall (5,685,494) who won a side event on September 13 for more than $80,000. Claas Segrebrecht (5,667,464), Damian Salas (4,125,200), Davidi Kitai (2,889,086), and Upeshka Da Silva (2,576,898) are also still in the hunt, although the latter is the tournament’s short stack with approximately 10 big blinds.

Watch The Action Unfold on Day 3

Head to our Twitch channel from 20:30 CEST if you want to watch the WPTWOC Main Event action unfold before your very eyes. We have cards-up coverage from this incredible tournament and we’ll be with you every step of the way until only nine players have chips in front of them. The tournament pauses at this stage and resumes at 20:00 CEST on September 16 for the final table.