Two of Ireland’s most experienced professional poker players have crashed and burned on day 2a of the WSOP in the Rio Casino, Las Vegas but the baton has been passed safely to a posse of young pretenders.

Padraig Parkinson and Andy Black, both with significant WSOP final table experience and strongly fancied to go deep in this year’s event, bit the dust on a day of dramatic swings that saw the first batch of 1600 players (day 2b beings today with another 1600 players) play down to 600 – just outside the money.

Dundalk man Paul McCaffery, one of the chip leaders at the end of day one, took a few hits but managed to hang in to the end of the day with 79,000 chips.