Welcome to Day 2 of Event #12: $5,000 No Limit Hold��em Freezeout here at the 2023 World Series of Poker in Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas. A total of 735 players joined the action on Day 1 to create a massive prize pool of $3,381,000, and after the dust settled, only 148 remain in the hunt for WSOP gold.
Ukraine's Artem Metalidi secured the chip lead position with an impressive stack of 796,000, good for 100 big blinds. Metalidi, who is no stranger to these types of fields with over $3,600,000 in live earnings, will look to add to his impressive poker resume with a deep run here.
Also bagging healthy stacks were Matthew Hunt (519,000), four-time bracelet winner Josh Arieh (436,000), and Jeremy Becker (251,000), who's been on a run of a lifetime taking down ten tournaments since the start of the year to up his lifetime earning to just under $1 Million.
Day 2 Top 10 Chip Counts
| Rank | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Artem Metalidi | Ukraine | 796,000 | 100 |
| 2 | Julio Delgado | United States | 728,000 | 91 |
| 3 | Adekunle Olonoh | United States | 709,000 | 89 |
| 4 | Ruan Zhuang | United States | 597,000 | 75 |
| 5 | Matthew Hunt | United Kingdom | 519,000 | 65 |
| 6 | Michael Rodrigues | Portugal | 508,000 | 64 |
| 7 | Masaya Hayami | Japan | 505,000 | 63 |
| 8 | Nathan Russler | United States | 494,000 | 62 |
| 9 | Andrew Ostapchenko | United States | 486,000 | 61 |
| 10 | Orson Young | United States | 480,000 | 60 |
With 148 players returning to action in the gold section of the Horseshoe Event Center, all eyes will be on the money bubble looming closer. The top 111 will find a return on their investment with a min-cash being $8,011 and the eventual winner taking home $649,550.
Many other notables took to the green felts on Day 1 and some who couldn't find any run good include popular poker YouTuber Ethan "Rampage" Yau, multiple bracelet winners Alex Foxen, Chance Kornuth, and Daniel Negreanu, as well as Shaun Deeb, who finished second in the $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em Deepstack on WSOP.com early this morning.
The action kicks off at 1 p.m. local time today in the Horseshoe Event Center with blinds resuming at Level 16 with 4,000/8,000 and an 8,000 big blind ante. The plan is to play ten 60-minute levels and the remaining players will bag for Day 3 tomorrow, where a winner will be crowned.
As always, be sure to stick with PokerNews for all your up-to-date coverage of this event and others in the 2023 World Series of Poker.