This past weekend was a time of celebration in the United States. Not only was Saturday Independence Day (or Treason Day for those of you in the U.K.), but Sunday was the start of the 2015 World Series of Poker $10,000 Championship Event, best known as the Main Event. It is the biggest week of the poker year; time to have some fun with the spectacle.
Like last year, there will be three staring days for the Main Event. Players can choose their opening flight, though of course if they wait until Day 1C, that’s the day they will get. The survivors from Day 1A will meet again on Wednesday for Day 2A. Similarly, the players who make it through Day 1B will compete in Day 2B on Wednesday. Those two fields will be kept separate, though, and will be in different tournament rooms. The survivors from Day 1C will play Day 2C on Thursday. Day 3, held on Friday, will combine all players from the Day 2 flights who still have chips. From there, the tournament will carry on each day as normal until just nine players remain at some point on Wednesday, July 15th.
Players will begin with 30,000 chips and will play through five 120-minute levels each day, except for Day 8, which will end, as mentioned when there are nine players left, regardless of how many levels are completed. There will be 20-minute breaks after each level and a 90-minute dinner break after the first three levels each day.
Day 1A’s field is always the smallest, as many players don’t want to have a two-day layoff between Day 1 and Day 2, should they advance (and who goes into the tournament thinking they are going to bust out on the first day?). Not only can those two days feel really long as the anxiety for Day 2 builds, but it also means two more days to pay for a hotel room and two more days off of work for many people. Plus, there are still people trying to qualify for the Main Event via satellites. Day 1A of the 2015 WSOP Main Event will be no exception, as 741 players paid the $10,000 to participate, down slightly from the 771 that showed up for Day 1A last year. Last year’s total field was 6,683, so assuming we’ll be somewhere in that vicinity this year, the next couple days will be much more crowded.
The person to have honor of being the initial chip leader at the close of the night is William Kakon with 152,325 chips. He has already won a bracelet at the 2015 WSOP, winning Event #11: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em for nearly $200,000. According to his profiled on TheHendonMob.com, Kakon has ten lifetime cashes at the World Series of Poker, none of them in the Main Event.
480 players made it through Day 1A including last year’s third place finisher, Jorryt van Hoof, Ben Volpe, 2010 WSOP Main Event Champ Jonathan Duhamel, Abe Mosseri, Max Pescatori, Hoyt Corkins, Barry Shulman, Blair Rodman, Jeremy Ausmus, and 2005 WSOP Main Event final table members Andy Black and Mike Matusow.
Erik Seidel, Andy Bloch, John Hennigan, and Billy Baxter were among those eliminated Sunday.
Day 1B will begin at noon on Monday.
2015 World Series of Poker Main Event – Day 1A Chip Leaders
1. William Kakon – 152,325
2. Gjergj Sinishtaj – 149,100
3. Alex Tran – 142,700
4. Tomas Altamirano – 141,700
5. Patrick Madden – 140,500
6. Gabriel Monthan – 137,175
7. Tom Bedell – 134,900
8. Charles Sylvestre – 133,025
9. Dario Sammartino – 129,850
10. Stephen Costello – 125,825
