18 Players Still in Contention for the Trophy at the 2017 Winamax SISMIX Main Event

Outside the Casino de Marrakech the temperature hit an astounding 42 degrees Celsius, but the action was heating up inside the tournament area just as well on Day 2 of the 2017 Winamax SISMIX Main Event.

256 players started the day, and from the very beginning, the play was fast and furious. Players busted left and right, and after just three levels of play, the field was almost halved, and the bubble play had commenced. Even during hand-for-hand play, it was hard to keep up with the action, as short stacks put their tournament lives on the line. Japan's Kazuma Fujiyama managed to find a crucial double on the stone cold bubble, as did Karim Benamrouche. That left the Spanish player with the pseudonym 'Ignapoker' with the unhappy privilege of being the bubble boy, as his flopped second pair was no good against a rivered set of eights from Frenchman Mounim Kaddouri.

The pace did by no means slow down after the bubble burst, and two hours later another 52 players had been escorted to the cashier because of a profound lack of chips. Many Winamax Pros and VIPs were among the last 80 players in the tournament, but when Davidi Kitai busted by running fours into the nines of Paul Guichard, it started quite the avalanche of profiles busting. Bruno 'Kool Shen' Lopes hit the rail shortly after, Gaelle Baumann followed when her Ace-Eight were no match for Jerome Barre's Ace-King, and less than an hour before the end of the day, Alexandre 'Alexonmoon' Luneau ran out of chips after having nursed a short stack for a while.

Spanish player 'Ignapoker' in the seconds after bubbling the Main Event

The very last hand of the day saw the biggest pot of the tournament go the way of Day 1c chip leader [Removed:445]. Haho called a reraise preflop with a pair of deuces and had no seconds thoughts about putting his entire stack in the middle after having flopped quads. Sofiene Belaid were holding a mere Ace-Jack high and was drawing dead before the turn in the pot of nearly 7,000,000 chips. The elimination of Belaid in 19th meant that play was halted for the day, and thus Haho bagged up the overnight chip lead by a margin of more than two million to nearest contender, Kazuma Fujiyama (5,000,000)

Rounding out the top-5 before are Hugo Larachiche (4,450,000), Hector Gonzales (3,700,000) and the biggest profile remaining in the tournament, former EPT Deauville runner-up Paul Guichard (3,500,000).

The 18 remaining contenders for the title will play down to a winner tomorrow. Because of daylight saving time going into effect in Morocco tonight, play will resume in exactly 12 hours from now; at 1 pm local time. When it does, there will be 37 minutes and 51 seconds left of level 25 with blinds of 30,000/60,000 and a running ante of 10,000. The remaining players are all guaranteed 44,000 MAD (€4,042) for their time in Marrakech, but with a cool one million Moroccan Dhiram on top, everybody will be having high hopes coming into Day 3 of the tournament.

Payouts for the 2017 Winamax SISMIX Main Event

Place	Amount in MAD	Amount in €
1	1,000,000	88,496
2	720,000	63,717
3	500,000	44,248
4	350,000	30,973
5	250,000	22,124
6	175,000	15,487
7	130,000	11,504
8	105,000	9,292
9	90,200	7,982
10	81,000	7,168
11	73,000	6,460
12	65,000	5,752
13	65,000	5,752
14	57,000	5,044
15	57,000	5,044
16	50,000	4,425
17	50,000	4,425
18	44,000	3,894

The seating for Day 3 has already been drawn, and that only leaves us with a goodbye, sleep thight. The PokerNews live reporting team will be on the floor tomorrow to give you every bit of the action from the conclusion of the 2017 Winamax SISMIX Main Event. See you soon.

Day 3 Seat Draw

Table	Seat	Name	Nationality	Count
3	1	Sylvain Meriguet	France	1,380,000
3	2	Mickael Muselli	France	2,455,000
3	3	Hector Gonzales	Spain	3,700,000
3	4	William Picard	France	2,475,000
3	8	Hugo Larachiche	France	4,450,000
3	9	Mounim Kaddouri	France	3,060,000

5	1	Francois Pirault	France	495,000
5	3	Ivan Deyra	France	2,685,000
5	4	[Removed:445]	Morocco	7,400,000
5	5	Paul Guichard	France	3,500,000
5	6	Sliman Taghzouit	France	1,975,000
5	7	Florent Vaz Martin	France	2,885,000

9	1	Kazuma Fujiyama	Japan	5,000,000
9	2	Daniel Cervan	Morocco	3,300,000
9	3	Jerome Barre	France	555,000
9	5	Christophe Beyer	France	2,380,000
9	7	Romain Meyer	France	2,700,000
9	8	Rakesh Lalwani	India	3,260,000

All photos courtesy of Winamax

Tags: Alexandre Luneau Bruno Lopes Davidi Kitai Gaelle Baumann Paul Guichard