It was an action-packed day as 1,695 players assembled throughout the Rio's tournament rooms to start the $2,000 No-Limit Hold 'em event.
As usual, a number of big names were visible throughout the field, with pros like Kathy Liebert, Joe Sebok, Scott Seiver, Jonathan Little and Andy Black all making appearances. Most of the pros - like most of the field - failed to make Day 2, with just 213 returning when we restart tomorrow.
Corwin Cole will own the big stack tomorrow with nearly 185,700 chips. He'll be followed closely by Guillaume de la Gorce and Chino Rheem, who was chip leader for most of the day.
Join us again at 2PM tomorrow as we play our way down toward a final table.
In a relatively small hand, Jason Gray raised to 2,400 from the cutoff and Lika Gerasimov made the call from the button.
Gray bet 3,600 more on a flop of , and Gerasimov called before both players checked the rest of the board which finished . When Gray showed for top pair, Gerasimov mucked.
Not counting the hand we just reported on Chino Rheem, most of the chip leaders have pretty well locked up their stacks with just six hands left in today's action.
There are still some fireworks around the room as shorter stacks try to improve their positions before play resumes tomorrow, but overall, most hands are being one with just a preflop raise at this stage of the night.
We're sure this isn't how Chino Rheem wants his night to end.
Rheem's opponent got all in on a flop of and showed for top set while Rheem held for a flush draw. When Rheem bricked out with the and , his stack shrunk back to 68,000.
Steve O'Dwyer raised to 2,000 from early position and was called by the big blind. When the flop came , O'Dwyer bet 1,200 and got check-raised to 3,200.
When O'Dwyer shoved for 9,000, he got the call and saw the bad news as his pocket kings were drawing almost dead to his opponent's flopped straight with . A on the turn ended the hand and a meaningless on the river sent O'Dwyer home.