NOTE: Over 2,000 players have already registered for day 1c, late registration for day 1d is scheduled to reopen at 4:40pm PT today.
Day 1b of the Main Event brought 1,489 players to the Amazon and Pavilion rooms at the Rio for 9 hours of poker action. Phil Gordon, Rafe Furst, Joe Sebok and other dignitaries took part in the pre-game activities to help promote the Bad Beat on Cancer charity. Tuesday\’s \”shuffle up and deal\” command came from Ashley, named \”Dealer of the Year\” by the WSOP, to get the tournament into action. Some of the notables who didn\’t make it through the day included Annette Obrestad, Joe Sebok, Jamie Gold, Erick Lindgren, Bertrand \”ElkY\” Grospellier, Liv Boeree, Justin Bonomo, Mark Seif, Brandon Adams and former November Niners Darus Suharto, Ivan Demidov and Craig Marquis. For a semi-live view of Tuesday\’s action, check out Pauly\’s day 1b blog.
After 4 1/2 levels of play, 1,017 players will return Saturday afternoon as part of the day 2b field. The day 1b leader is James Danielson of La Plata, Maryland with 201,050 in chips. Some of the notables with a significant amount of chips: Alexander Kostritsyn (131,800), Phil \”OMGClayAiken\” Galfond (107,100), Gavin Griffin (97,200), Blair Rodman (85,025), Todd \”Dan Druff\” Witteles (73,475), Brandon Cantu (65,025), Gavin Smith (62,275) Vladimir Shchemelev (53,500), and Phil Laak (40,275). Team Pokerati/Loudmouth Poker pro Tom Schneider finished the day with 22,075 in chips. The full list of chip counts is now available at wsop.com. For those who made it through day 1a, there is a partial table draw available now here. The day 2b partial table draw is now online here, and on my Twitter when available.
As mentioned above, over 2,000 players have already signed up for day 1c, and today also brings the annual circus of Phil Hellmuth\’s grand entrance, scheduled for 1:30. This year, he\’s dressing up as an MMA fighter with Wanderlei Silva expected to be part of his entourage and UFC announcer Bruce Buffer introducing him. Daniel Negreanu has jokingly tweeted his own plans about making his entrance today as Rocky Balboa. The rest of the field will make their entrance the usual way, by walking into the Rio without making a spectacle of themselves. See what transpires during the day at wsop.com.