Recapping Thursday night’s action, with the final bracelet event before the WSOP starting this afternoon:

Welch jams Eaton for 3k Triple Chance bracelet

After a lengthy heads-up match, Ryan Welch secured his first WSOP bracelet, winning the $3,000 No-Limit Holdem Triple Chance tournament, earning $559,371. Eaton earned $344,830 for his runner-up finish, Guillaume Darcourt finished 3rd for $223,459 and Will “The Thrill” Failla coming in 4th for $163,352. Full results and Nolan Dalla’s tournament report are available at wsop.com.

Kenney leads 25k NL 6-max into money

Day two of the $25,000 No-Limit Holdem 6-max finished with 18 players remaining with John Juanda being the unfortunate bubble boy. When play resumes at 3pm, Bryn Kenney will start the day as the chip leader with 2,425,000. Among the notables: Abe Mosseri (1,035,000), Daniel Negreanu (860,000), Isaac Haxton (835,000), Justin Bonomo (576,000) and Carlos Mortensen (484,000). Full chip counts and updates during the afternoon at wsop.com.

$1500 Limit Shootout Final Table

Day two of the $1,500 Limit Holdem Shootout started with the disqualification of Yueqi “Rich” Zhu, for making a deal heads-up when he won his shootout table on Wednesday. Zhu explained to PokerNews he was feeling ill, and decided to make a deal with his opponent. After that was taken care of, the remaining 63 players at the eight shootout tables playing down to a winner. The final table will start at 3pm today with this lineup, each starting with 450,000 chips:

Jonathan Little
Terrence Chan
Mike Schneider
Joe McGowan
Ben Yu
Brian Tate
Brendan Taylor
Sijbrand Maal

Follow the updates for this event at PokerNews.

Dempsey leads day 1a of 1k NL

Day 1a of the final $1,000 No-Limit Holdem tournament of the WSOP drew 2,340 entrants Thursday afternoon to the Amazon and Pavillion rooms at the Rio. Play finished halfway through level 9 with 331 players to return Saturday afternoon. James “Flushy” Dempsey leads the day 1a field with 144,100 in chips. Among the notables returning: Shannon Shorr (45,000), Toto Leonidas (31,475), Jena Delk (23,175) and Liv Boeree (16,575). A full list of chip counts is available at PokerNews.

Paino leads 10k PLO Day 1

The $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha got underway Thursday afternoon with a field of 346 players taking the felt. After eight levels of play, 166 will return at 3pm, with the final 36 players making the money with the winner taking down $780,599. Antonio Paino leads the returning players with 240,000 in chips, with James Akenhead (181,100), Fabrice Soulier (151,200), Noah Boeken (114,400), Annette Obrestad (106,900), Tom Dwan (103,800) and Michael Binger (97,200) among the big names in the upper half of the leaderboard. The full list of chip counts is now available at wsop.com.

Friday’s tournament

Besides day 1b of the $1,000 No-Limit Holdem event starting at 12pm, the 5pm tournament is the $2,500 No-Limit Holdem event. Last year, Keven Stammen won this event in a field of 1,088 for $506,878.

The $1,000 NL Holdem Stimulus Special is nearing its final table as they’re down to 13 players and may stop for the day when they reach their final table. Jeff Oakes is the current chip leader with 2,400,000. Danny Fuhs is currently 2nd. Dan Heimiller and Steve Sung are other notables who are looking to make the final table, which will either take place later tonight or Wednesday at 2pm, as the scheduled streaming of the final table has been postponed.

The $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha event is working their way down to its final table tonight. They currently have 27 players remaining as they went on their dinner break. Jonathan Tare will have the chip lead when the players return, Greg Pappas is currently in 2nd, with day 1 chip leader Jason Mercier is 3rd in chips. Former bracelet winners Dario Alioto, Eric Froehlich and An Tran are some of the notables making up the final three tables.

The $10,000 7-Card Stud World Championship has 45 players remaining while they play down to their final table. The current leader is Fu Wong, followed by Greg “FBT” Mueller, Max Pescatori, Nick Frangos, Hoyt Corkins and Cory Zeidman. A recent elimination was Day 1 chip leader David Oppenheim, along with Phil Ivey, Joe Cassidy and Bruno Fitoussi being day 2 casualties, falling far short of the money that will be reached when 16 players remain.

The $1,500 NL Holdem event got underway today as a field of 2,791 entrants flooded the tournament area, causing delays in the starts of several other events. Returning on the dinner break will be 889 players, with the current chip leader is Jonathan Little, with “Minneapolis Jim” Meehan, Bertrand “Elky” Grospelier, Tiffany Michelle and Chau Giang among the notables off to a fast start. The money will be reached when 297 players remain, with the winner taking home $666,853.

The $2,500 NL 2-7 Lowball Single Draw event started as 148 players took their seats, as plenty of notables round out the field, including Greg Raymer, Erick Lindgren, John Juanda, Billy Baxter, Chino Rheem, Gavin Smith and Pokerati’s own Tom Schneider as they play eight one-hour levels tonight. Follow all the tournament’s progress at www.worldseriesofpoker.com and Pokerati for DonkeyBomber and other updates.

A few recaps while several tournaments are on their dinner breaks:

The 40th Annual $40,000 NL Holdem final table has 4 players remaining. Greg Raymer, Vitaly Lunkin, Isaac Haxton and Dani Stern make up the final four to take home nearly $2m and the first open gold bracelet of the WSOP. Ted Forrest, Noah Schwartz, Lex Veldhius, Alec Torelli and Justin Bonomo were eliminated earlier today from the final table.

Speaking of Raymer, the WSOP Champions Invitational got underway earlier this afternoon. 20 of the 25 surviving champions accepted their RSVPs to be filmed under the bright lights of the ESPN cameras. Within the first orbit, 2006 winner Jamie Gold was the first player eliminated, while 2003 winner Chris Moneymaker watched his 10,000 chip stack dwindle erode before he finally busted. Raymer was able to get a couple of hands in before returning to the $40k final table. Six more one-hour levels or until the final table of nine return Monday afternoon.

More recaps on the next page:
More…

Jonathan Little’s most recent accomplishment was making the “Elite 8” in the NBC Heads-Up Championship, scoring a $75k payday before being slapped by eventual winner and Full Tilt honcho Chris Ferguson.

While account-sharing is hardly the worst offense when it comes to poker ethics, it is in violation of Full Tilt T&C’s for their pros. So Little, who’s FT stock was on the rise, is now out. Stupid kid Yo, bummer dude.

Confirmed by Full Tilt here.

When a player on Full Tilt Poker plays against and chats with a red pro on the site, it is imperative that they be able to trust that it is really the advertised pro playing the account. Given that Mr. Little violated that trust, we have decided to sever his ties to the site, and close his account.

The first well-known pro to get busted for online account-sharing was Phil Hellmuth (outed here, and confronted about it here).

After that, Howard Lederer reportedly sent out a memo to all the Full Tilt pros letting them know that if they ever did something similar, they would be canned immediately. Little wasn’t part of the team when that went down, so maybe he didn’t embrace the seriousness that Full Tilt places on its integrity. Gotta wonder if these sorts of indiscretions will occur more regularly as Full Tilt continues to sign up more and more pros. Also wonder how long Little’s FT page will stay up online.

Brick-and-mortar tournament success here.