Victor Ramdin has earned more than $2.4 million playing tournament poker, and he’s every bit as happy as you would expect someone to be who has won millions in cash. Ramdin’s jovial nature hasn’t stopped him from succeeding in the cutthroat world of professional poker, however. In 2006, he took down the Foxwoods Poker Classic, earning over $1.3 million. So far this year at the World Series of Poker, he has cashed three times, making the final table at event No. 51 ($1,500 H.O.R.S.E.). He has been perched atop the chip counts for most of day 2B of the main event, finishing the day in the top 10 with more than 300,000. Card Player caught up with Ramdin at the end of the day.

Ryan Cadrette: You ended the day with 358,000 in chips. How are you feeling right now?

Victor Ramdin: Man, I’m just drained. I’m just tired. It’s been a while since I’ve been so tired, and I don’t even know why I am now. I guess I didn’t get enough sleep or something last night. I’m happy I got through the day, but right now I want to go home and get some rest for tomorrow.

RC: You have to deal with a lot of amateurs who are usually happy to play really big pots. How do you handle that while still applying pressure as a big stack?

VR: I am pretty much just selectively going after certain players, because the younger players I think have more adrenaline than I do. They have more of a rush for playing big pots, and I don’t play big pots. I play big pots when I have the nuts or semi-nuts, or probably if I’m bluffing or something. But I just grind. I’ve been grinding all day. No all-in feasts or anything like that. Just the old Victor-Ramdin grind.

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One thousand, two hundred and fifty-one Day 1A and Day 1B survivors combined to play Day 2A of the WSOP Championship in what turned out to be a very fast day of play. It was also very much a day in which the rich got richer and the poor left early. Brian Schaedlich, a special education teacher from Cleveland, was clearly one of the players that parlayed a healthy Day 1 stack into an embarrassment of riches, starting with just over 160,000 and building it to a field-leading 801,000! And 2005 Tournament of Champions final tablist Brandon Adams took his above-average starting stack of 176,000 to over 350,000 in his second day of play. Adams, a Harvard PhD student, played to a deep 69th place in this event last year and is obviously making another run at it.

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