Only one tournament opened up play yesterday at the 2014 World Series of Poker, but it did draw a crowd. 1594 runners came to the line for Event #26, the $1500 No Limit Hold’em tournament, coming up just short of the money by the time the action ended early this morning.
Day One action is normally a bit slow, but the players showed their willingness to gamble early with their 4500 chip starting stacks. One of those who headed to the rail a bit earlier than they might have liked was European professional Mickey Petersen, who was gone for the day only two hours into the action. “Nothing like that first bust out of the summer,” Petersen commented over Twitter. “You played so terrible that you wonder why you ever called yourself a professional to begin with.”
Petersen wasn’t the only player with those emotions. Phil Laak, Phil Collins, Sam Trickett, Liv Boeree, Tony Dunst, Annette Obrestad, Peter Costa, Barny Boatman and defending World Champion Ryan Riess all failed to make it to at least the dinner break while a couple of players decided to take advantage of late registration to make their runs at a WSOP bracelet. Those players – Phil Hellmuth (naturally) and Dan Smith – would make some impressive runs in just a few hours.
Smith, who was one of the last entries into the field, powered his way through his competition as he built a monstrous stack. Smith used a race situation, his Big Slick against pocket Queens, to jump over the 100K chip mark. By the end of the night, he sat with a sizeable 132,800 stack, which will set him up well for Day Two on Thursday.
Hellmuth was a bit quieter about his work through Day One, but it will be enough to get him to Day Two. He slowly ground up his starting stack to finish off the day with 34,600 in chips, not one of those in the upper reaches of the leaderboard but enough for the 13-time WSOP bracelet winner to have some ammunition come this afternoon.
The end of the day came up short of the money bubble as 178 players were still around when the chips were bagged and tagged. 171 of those players will earn the minimum cash from the tournament as Mark Dube takes his 160,300 stack to battle on Thursday afternoon.
1. Mark Dube, 160,300
2. Dan Smith, 132,800
3. Ryan Welch, 101,000
4. Vanessa Kade, 95,800
5. Travell Thomas, 88,000
6. Martin Finger, 85,700
7. Mike McDonald, 81,900
8. Max Silver, 80,100
9. Scott Clements, 75,100
10. Chris Symesko, 73,600
The minimum cash for the event is a pleasant $2840, but no one wants to be taking home that amount. Everyone has their eyes on the big prize, the $408,953 and the WSOP bracelet that will go to the victor on Friday.
STARTING TODAY
Two tournaments will start on Thursday and it may be a difficult decision for some of the professionals in the field which event to jump into. At noon, the $1500 H.O.R.S.E. tournament takes to the stage and should draw a nice field replete with mixed game specialists who enjoy the challenge of the five games. In 2013, this event drew in an 862 player field and featured an outstanding showdown at the final table between Owais Ahmed and eventual champion Tom Schneider.
The second event on Thursday’s schedule should be packed with big name pros looking to take a WSOP bracelet (or another one, in some cases). The $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em tournament, Event #28 on the WSOP slate, was only a $5000 tournament in 2013 while drawing in a 195 player field. At the end of that tournament, Davidi Kitai, was able to best Cary Katz to take his second WSOP bracelet (at that time) and the $224,560 first place prize.
Along with two tournaments almost at their final tables and the continuation of Event #26, the Rio will be bustling on Thursday. The action won’t let up heading into the weekend either as lower buy-in events start for the “weekend warriors” heading to Las Vegas.