Ivens Leads Fina; 18 After Marathon Day 3 of Event #74: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship
Low Card: 5,000
Completion: 15,000
Limits: 15,000-30,000
Day 2 of Event #74: $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship turned into a marathon as the 74 players who began the day turned into close to 100 with 24 Day 2 late registrations. Then an elongated 90-minute bubble turned the day into one that would go nearly 14 hours and finally end near 2 a.m. with 18 players left with chips.
Todd Ivens was a max late-regger who ended as the chip leader with 1,190,000 after he had a strong final few levels to wrestle the chip lead away at the end of the night from Andrey Zhigalov who finished as the second largest stack with 983,000. Zhigalov had been the leader for much of the day from early on as he had more than double the second largest stack at one point in the first few hours of the day, which drew several incredulous looks from adjacent tables. He maintained that big chip stack all day long until the end.
Bracelet winners Todd Brunson (859,000) and Brad Ruben (738,000) had string finishes to the day to end up in the top five stacks and set themselves up in nice position for Day 3.
Top 10 Chip Counts
| Place | Player | Chip Count | Big Bets | |
| 1 | Todd Ivens | 1,190,000 | 30 | |
| 2 | Andrey Zhigalov | 983,000 | 25 | |
| 3 | Jared Talarico | 963,000 | 24 | |
| 4 | Todd Brunson | 859,000 | 21 | |
| 5 | Brad Ruben | 738,000 | 18 | |
| 6 | Jake Schwartz | 735,000 | 18 | |
| 7 | Arash Ghaneian | 704,000 | 18 | |
| 8 | Thomas Taylor | 688,000 | 17 | |
| 9 | Hisashi Yamanouchi | 676,000 | 17 | |
| 10 | Richard Sklar | 613,000 | 15 |
Also alive among the final 18 is none other than Norman Chad who is making the most of one of his favorite variants of poker with a deep run to Day 3 where he will take a middle of the pack stack of 288,000. Chad's longtime poker announcing booth partner Lon McEachern was on hand for much of the day to watch his friend make it to Day 3.
The day began with Allen Kessler as the third largest stack, but he would not have the best day as his momentum did not continue at all into Day 2 and his stack was depleted an hour before dinner break.
Start of day chip leader Ali Eslami would have a similarly bleak day as his chip lead was exhausted well before the money.
Several other notables exited as the money approached; including Anthony Zinno, Brandon Shack-Harris and Chad Eveslage.
The money bubble was the drama of the day as there were six all ins who survived over the course of 90-minutes and close to 40 hands. Finally, Suketu Patel would be the unfortunate one to bite the dust and bring the rest of the field into the money.
With the amount of players still remaining, Day 3 promises to be a marathon as well, with the day starting at 1 p.m. at Level 18 where PokerNews will bring all the action your way once again.
