Finishing up business from Monday night before moving on…
The $1,000 NL Holdem Stimulus Special finished at 3am today with 50 players returning at 1pm to play down to a winner. The chip leader is Robert Comegys from Grand Prairie, TX with nearly 1.2m million in chips. Danny Fuhs is close behind, with notables such as Eric Mizrachi, Lee Watkinson, Dan Heimiller, and Jonathan Aguiar far down the leaderboard. More details will be available in my PokerNews recap later today. Today\’s event is scheduled to be the first of over 20 WSOP final tables to be streamed online this year. The scheduled 2pm final table will be pushed back at least a few hours, depending on how fast play is today. Updates on Pokerati during the day today.
The $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha event finished their Day 1 with 81 players remaining, the exact amount needed to reach the money. Jason Mercier, best known for his success on the European Poker Tour, is the chip leader with 227,000 in chips, over 60,000 more than second placed Matt Humphrey. Other notables who\’ve made the money include Eric Froehlich,, Dario Alioto, Josh Arieh, An Tran, Warren Karp, Shannon Shorr, Robert Mizrachi, and Kirill Gerasimov. Those players and many more return at 2pm today to play down to a final table.
The $10,000 Seven Card Stud World Championship ended after eight levels with 101 of its remaining 142 entrants remaining. High-stakes cash game player David Oppenheim emerged as the chip leader, with veterans \”Miami John\” Cernuto, Nick Frangos, Danny Robison, and Steve Zolotow helping make up the top 10. Others who\’ll be looking to work their way up include Eli Elezra, Todd Brunson, Eric Drache, Erick Lindgren, Andy Bloch, Cory Zeidman and Phil Ivey. They also return at 2pm to play down to their final table.
The one event that was able to conclude Monday was the WSOP Champions Invitational as Tom McEvoy, the 1983 Main Event winner, knocked off Robert Varkonyi, the 2002 Main Event champion to win the first Binion Cup along with a 1970 red Corvette.
The preview for today\’s events:
Today\’s festivities get underway at 12 noon with Event #7 – $1,500 NL Holdem and a field that could reach the 2,800 player maximum. Vitaly Lunkin, who took down the 40k NL Holdem earlier this week, is listed as the defending champion of this event. With several $1,500 NL Holdem events held during the WSOP the past few years, I\’d say they winners are interchangable. At 5pm is Event #8 – $2,500 NL 2-7 Lowball (Single Draw). This is the first year for this event, which serves as a warmup for the $10,000 World Championship NL 2-7 Lowball event on June 10.
Time to amuse myself with a few predictions. Monday, both the PLO and Stud events fell under both mine and the WSOP projections so I\’m currently at 2-4. The projection for today\’s 1,500 NL Holdem event is 2,801 (curiously, over the 2,800 cap listed elsewhere in their Resource Guide). They\’ll be able to squeeze a few more people into the field so take the over with a field of 2,840. The $2,500 NL 2-7 Lowball is a bit trickier, being a new event at this buyin amount, as in previous years it would usually be a $5,000 event, usually with rebuys. The projection is 150, so the hopes is that a few people will be adventurous and give this a try. I\’ll take the under, with at least 100, but not much more looking for some action. More updates and other stuff from Pokerati during the day.