The first day of the Harvey’s Lake Tahoe World Series of Poker Circuit Event kicked off on Friday and emerging atop the leader board was Chris Dombrowski, who had four cashes during the 2008 WSOP tournament series in Las Vegas. Hot on his heels is Ty Stewart from Sacramento, California, who sits with the second largest stack in the room. Play resumes today for Day Two.
There were 132 entrants in the $5,150 buy-in event, which meant that the total prize pool ballooned to $640,000. Last year, 142 players entered. First place is slated to take home over $180,000. Here is a look at the top ten chip stacks at Harvey’s Tahoe after one day of play:
1. Chris Dombrowski (Wesley Chapel, Florida), 104,100
2. Ty Stewart (Sacramento, California), 95,000
3. Tom Masinter (Dublin, California), 75,800
4. Tay Nguyen (Elk Grove, California), 71,700
5. Travis Erdman (San Francisco, California), 71,300
6. Marty Wong (Napa, California), 67,700
7. Scott Clements (Mt. Vernon, Washington), 65,200
8. Neal Cooke (Loveland, Colorado), 60,300
9. Michael Binger (Las Vegas, Nevada), 59,800
10. Carol Hampton (Cameron Park, California), 59,000
Chris Dombrowski logged four cashes during the 2008 WSOP, headlined by a 34th place finish in a $5,000 buy-in six-handed No Limit Hold’em tournament for $16,647. He’s already put up results this year at Harvey’s in the form of a third place finish in a $340 buy-in WSOPC preliminary event for $3,431.
Scott Clements is the proud owner of two WSOP bracelets in Omaha tournaments. He won a $3,000 buy-in Omaha High-Low Split tournament in 2006 for bracelet number one and followed that up one year later with a win in a Pot Limit Omaha tournament for his second piece of hardware. All told, Clements, who is known as “BigRiskky” in the online poker world, has a dozen WSOP cashes to his name for a total of $714,824. He also won the 2007 WPT North American Poker Championship for $1.1 million, defeating Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little heads-up.
Michael Binger famously finished third in the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event for $4.1 million. The holder of a Ph. D. in Theoretical Particle Physics, Binger was outlasted by only Paul Wasicka and Jamie Gold in that tournament. Binger also finished third in a $5,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em event during the 2007 WSOP for nearly $300,000. He’s earned just under $4.8 million from his WSOP performances.
Last year’s Harvey’s Tahoe champion, Full Tilt Poker pro Chris Ferguson, survived Day One and sits with the 13th largest chip stack in the room with 51,800. “Jesus,” as he’s more commonly referred to in the poker world, owns five WSOP bracelets, the most recent of which came by virtue of winning a $2,000 buy-in Limit Hold’em and Seven Card Stud event back in 2003. Ferguson won the WSOP Main Event in 2000. He’s had a ton of success on the WSOP Circuit in recent years, winning the Harrah’s Rincon championship event in 2005 and the Harrah’s Las Vegas stop later that year. Last year’s Harvey’s Tahoe victory earned Ferguson $203,000 after he defeated Dustin Fox heads-up.
Other notable chip stacks include:
22. Kathy Liebert, 38,300
37. Aaron Kanter, 22,000
Evan “Oakplayer” Schwartz, who has won multiple WSOP Circuit Event tournaments at Harvey’s Tahoe, entered, but was sent packing on Day One. Also ousted on Friday were WSOP Main Event champions Johnny Chan and Jerry Yang along with bracelet winners Jeff Madsen and Italian poker pro Max Pescatori. The top 18 spots will pay out, with first place taking home about 10% less than Ferguson won in 2007:
1st Place: $181,379 (plus $11,000 seat into the 2009 WSOP Main Event)
2nd Place: $112,675
3rd Place: $77,464
4th Place: $53,777
5th Place: $40,653
6th Place: $31,370
7th Place: $24,968
8th Place: $18,566
9th Place: $13,444
10th through 12th Places: $9,603
13th through 15th Places: $8,323
16th through 18th Places: $7,042
The tournament will crown a winner on Sunday.
