2007 Main Event Champion Jerry Yang got Day 1b underway with a speech along with the customary “Shuffle up and deal!” as 1,158 players began play on Friday. The field was smaller than day 1a, as was expected with it being July 4th. Americans, along with players from countries all over the world, wore flags in their caps provided by the staff to celebrate the holiday.
Two featured tables were set up by ESPN for Day 1b, one featuring Erick Lindgren and the other Daniel Negreanu. The two pros (and friends) had very different results, as Lindgren finished the day near the top of the leaderboard with more than 93,000 chips and Negreanu was sent packing 1 hour and 39 minutes into the day. Daniel’s flopped set of sixes lost to a set of nines.
The chip leader at the end of Day 1b was Ben Samoff with 177,500. Some notables in his shadow as play concluded Friday were Robert Mizrachi (142,400), Mike Watson (104,425) and Rasmus Nielsen (92,400), who took second in Event 49 last week to J.C. Tran.
Patrik Antonius spent most of the day among the chip leaders but lost nearly half his stack on the last hand of the night. He and Tor Gammelgard got all of their chips in on a J-10-5 flop with two spades, Gammelgard holding A-J and Antonius J-6. The ace on the turn left Patrick drawing dead and he ended the day with 64,125 – his lowest count since about 5:00 p.m. when he won a pot with a set of threes against pocket kings. Gammelgard doubled up to 81,850.
A handful of former Main Event Champions played on Friday, including Greg Raymer, Tom McEvoy, Robert Varkonyi and Jamie Gold. Gold was encircled with controversy early on in the day as his table began playing with 25/50 blinds for the first hour while the rest of the tournament was playing 50/100. When a new dealer came in, the problem was corrected. Gold spent most of the day short stacked and was eventually eliminated when he ran K-Q into Q-Q preflop and was unable to catch up.
Raymer and McEvoy were also knocked out of Day 1b, but Varkonyi was able to advance while being cheered on by his wife Olga, who also played on Friday before busting. Robert and Olga were the only married couple to play Day 1b; three couples played on Day 1a.
One of the inspiration stories of last year’s Main Event was Hal Lubarsky, who became the first blind player ever to cash in the tournament. Lubarsky is aided by a designated card reader, who sits behind him and whispers his hole cards and the board to him. Lubarsky is back and was a force on Day 1b, accumulating 70,700 chips, which places him in the top 20 percent of the field.
Six-hundred fifteen players made it through Day 1b and will advance to Day 2a, which will commence on Tuesday, July 8. Day 1c will kick off Saturday at noon with expectations of an enormous crowd of at least 2,500 players in attendance. They will all have their eyes set on Mark Garner’s Day 1a total of 194,900 chips, which is the chip lead after the first two days of play.