Three down, one to go
We have arrived. Today is the day for which World Series of Poker officials have simultaneously filled us with excitement and dread. Day 1C of the 2022 WSOP Main Event is in the books, so it is on to Wednesday’s Day 1D, which is expected to be gigantic. The final starting flight is always huge, but this year, we have been warned that it could put the Main Event into record-breaking territory.
Day 1C was almost exactly as large as Days 1A and 1B combined, slightly larger, in fact, with 1,800 entries. Days 1A and 1B had 900 and 880, respectively. Most of the Day 1C players – 1,376 – made it through to Day 2C. That’s more players on one Day 2 flight than there were in the entire Main Event each year through 2003 (the year Chris Moneymaker won and poker…boomed).
Day 2C was originally to be played on Friday, but because of a schedule change this week, Day 2A, 2B, and 2C will all run on Thursday, leaving Day 2D to have Friday to itself.
Ireland’s Patrick Clarke bagged most chips after Day 1C, finishing with 397,200, a total that puts him atop the overall leaderboard after three flights. Two other players eclipsed the 300,000-chip mark on Tuesday: Marcus Stein with 336,800 and David Eldridge with 308,000.
Clarke has over $1.6 million in live tournament earnings (thank you to TheHendonMob for the data), nearly $300,000 of which is from World Series of Poker events.
Raymer, Ensan, Negreanu out
A couple former champs fell by the wayside on Day 1C and will have to wait at least another year to try to put their names in the poker history books once again: 2004 Main Event winner Greg “Fossilman” Raymer and 2019 champion Hossein Ensan. 2015 Main Event bracelet holder Joe McKeehen, however, did make it through to Day 2C with 95,000 chips.
Among the other big names to hit the rail on Tuesday was Daniel Negreanu, who went all-in for his last 1,000 chips (starting stacks were 60,000, to give you and idea how things were going for him) with A-K of spades. Dennis Wilke and two other players continued to the 8-4-5 flop (one spade). Wilke bet when another 8 landed on the turn, forcing one player out. On the river (reports don’t say what the card was), Wilke bet 11,000 and the other player folded; Wilke turned over T-4 of spades for a pair, eliminating Negreanu.
Though there are still events to come, it has been a disastrous WSOP so far for Daniel Negreanu, who always plays tons of tournaments, gunning for that WSOP Player of the Year title. Counting online events, he does have seven cashes, but for only $119,597 in earnings. For most of us, that would be a wonderful sum of money, but considering how much he has spent on buy-ins ($500,000 in the Super High Roller alone), it’s been a rough Series for Negreanu.
The final starting flight, Day 1D, is today. It will dwarf the other three and is expected to be so large that tournament officials, as mentioned, rearranged the Day 2 schedule. They also encouraged people earlier this week to play in Days 1B or 1C so as to make life a little easier on Day 1D, which will likely start with ten-handed tables. The largest Main Event field of all time was in 2006 at 8,773 runners; with 3,580 in the field already, it would actually be a surprise if the record wasn’t broken this year.
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