The tsunami of poker that is descending on Las Vegas for the next three months has kicked off with the start of the World Poker Tour’s World Championship event at the Bellagio on Saturday.
The WPT Championship features an extremely deep stacked format and late registration that kept the first day numbers down but, even with that said, it was still an impressive field. Playing four 90 minute levels for Day One and starting with 100,000 chips, 103 players stepped to the green baize to compete for the final title of the WPT Season Ten schedule. Among those who would step forward on Day One to take their shot at the championship were some of the top professionals in the game, vying for not only the WPT Championship honors but also other awards as well.
Each of the 21 events prior to the WPT Championship awarded its victor with a seat to this particular tournament and nearly every winner has turned up to compete. Of those who earned their $25K seat for free, only WPT Ireland champion Dave Shallow and WPT Grand Prix de Paris victor Matt Waxman had not made an appearance yet at the Bellagio (WPT Barcelona winner Lukas Berglund is under 21 and thus unable to play in Las Vegas). With Waxman Tweeting that he will be registering on Sunday, only Shallow has yet to step into the fray.
Besides the Season Ten champions of the WPT, the field was replete with top names. In the early going, Daniel Negreanu, Daniel Santoro and Cliff Josephy entered into a pot after a raise from Josephy and calls from the other two gentlemen. The big blind came along as well and, four handed, they saw an A-J-8 flop. This was enough to get the gamble going for the men on the felt as the chips began to fly.
After a Negreanu check, the big blind pushed out a 1300 chip bet. Josephy made the call, only to see former WPT champion Santoro popped the action to 5500. Back to Negreanu, “Kid Poker” flung some chips of his own, four betting the proceedings up to 14K. The big blind decided that discretion was the better part of valor and ducked out, but Josephy made a strong statement by making it 40K.
Santoro now decided that he had enough, folding his hand, but Negreanu agonized over the decision. After some deliberation, Negreanu showed his pocket Jacks for middle set and mucked his cards. Josephy was kind enough to show Negreanu one Ace and later admitted on Twitter that he did, indeed, have pocket Aces for the top set. To be honest, it was an amazing laydown by one of the best players in the game.
Two players with a great deal on the line at the WPT Championship did well during their opening day of play. Joe Serock, who held the lead in the WPT Player of the Year race for all of a week, moved up the leaderboard early by cutting out a sizeable chunk of chips from Heather Sue Mercer and would finish the day in the Top Ten. Another player with POY aspirations, Vanessa Selbst, bested Serock by finishing one spot above him in fifth place on the Day One table. It was Steve O’Dwyer, however, who would walk away with the day’s chip lead after staying out of major attention throughout the day:
1. Steve O’Dwyer, 231,750
2. Masa Kagawa, 228,675
3. Tyler Smith, 221,600
4. Guillaume Darcourt, 215,250
5. Vanessa Selbst, 207,425
6. Joe Serock, 197,000
7. Michael Mizrachi, 194,875
8. Justin Young, 190,000
9. Isaac Haxton, 189,500
10. Farzad Bonyadi, 185,000
Of the original 103 starters, 98 of them will come back to do battle on Sunday afternoon. With the late registration period lasting until the start of play Monday, there will be no accurate count as to the players or the first place prize they will play for until sometime that afternoon. If the quality of players that come out on Sunday is as good as what was seen yesterday, the 2012 WPT Championship could go down as one to remember.
